How to find the products that lose money in your catalogue
Calculate the profit per order for every product, not just your best-seller, and sort by the result. In our example file with 6 products, 2 lose money on every order – together €179.95 a month – while the shop as a whole still looks profitable. The catalogue analysis does this from a CSV file: free for up to 10 products, all products with Pro.
Upload your product list or try the example data – free for up to 10 products.
Open the catalogue analysisWhy a profitable shop can hide loss makers
Your bank account shows the total. If a few products earn well, they can cover others that lose money on every order. You only notice when you look at each product on its own – with all its costs: shipping, fees, ads and returns.
Products with a low price are the usual suspects. Shipping and fixed fees stay the same while the price is small, so there is little or nothing left.
How to check your catalogue – step by step
- Export your product list from your shop or marketplace as a CSV file. You need at least the product number, the selling price and the purchase price.
- Add what you know per product: shipping cost, fees, ad cost per order, return rate and sales per month. Missing columns use the values you set once for all products.
- Upload the file to the catalogue analysis. It checks the data first and tells you which rows have problems.
- Sort by contribution per order. Everything below zero loses money on every sale.
- Then sort by contribution per month. This shows where the loss is big because the product sells often.
- Decide product by product what to do (see below), change it, and run the analysis again a few weeks later.
What to do with each loss maker
There is no single answer. Go through these questions in order:
- Is the price too low? Compare it with the break-even price from the analysis. If the market accepts a higher price, raise it.
- Is one cost unusually high? Often it is shipping for a cheap item or ads. Lower that cost or stop advertising this product.
- Is it often bought together with other products? Then it may still be worth keeping – check the whole order, not just this item.
- If none of this helps: stop selling it, or sell it only in bundles.
What is free and what needs Pro
The free version checks your file and analyses the first 10 products: contribution, margin and break-even price per product, plus a summary. Pro covers all products in the file and adds a price recommendation per product, price scenarios and an Excel report. For a first look, 10 products are often enough – start with your best-sellers and your cheapest products.
Worked examples: Example file with 6 products
The catalogue analysis' own example data (“Try with example data”). Products, prices and costs are examples, not real shop data.
- Products that earn money
- 3
- Products with a thin margin
- 1
- Products that lose money
- 2
- Biggest loss per order (Desk lamp)
- -€7.05
- Money these products lose per month
- €179.95
- Contribution of the whole shop per month
- €1,128.00
- Same shop if the loss makers broke even
- €1,307.96
The shop earns €1,128.00 a month, so everything looks fine. But 2 products cost it €179.95 a month. And not every thin margin is a problem: USB-C cable earns little per order but €131.31 a month because it sells often.