Margin and markup on each line of a price list, and the price each line needs to reach the target you set

AThe sheet, at a glance

The figure a two-field margin box does not print: a whole price list footed into one row, both ratios of every line side by side, and the price each line would need at the target you typed for it. Print this sheet

Printed from otherworldlabs.com, the margin and markup sheet.

BThe price list you are typing

A cost and a price make a row complete. A target and the basis it is read on are optional, and a row without them simply prints no needed price. Leave the units empty and the sheet foots one of each row; type a count and it foots that many.

Only hold one total for a whole lot, a case or a month? Type that total cost and that total price on one row and leave the units empty: every ratio here is a ratio of those two figures, so the margin and the markup are unchanged whether the two figures describe one item or a pallet of them, and the price the row needs comes back in the same money you typed it in. The per-unit columns are for a list that was priced item by item.

CThe price list, row by row

Your typed figures and the six computed ones, side by side, with the whole list footed underneath. The footed margin and markup come off the footed cost and the footed price, not from averaging the rows.

A row with no target typed prints no needed price and no converted ratio, and foots into the cost, the price and the profit regardless.

DEvery figure, worked

Each row first, in the figures you typed, then the whole list.

Then the sheet, footed from the rows you typed.

EHow the two ratios are read

The profit on a row

The price you typed with the cost you typed taken out of it, in whatever money you typed. It is one subtraction, and it is the numerator of both ratios: everything else here is that one figure divided by something.

The margin

That profit as a share of the price. Its denominator is the price, so while any cost remains the unrounded share never reaches the whole hundred per cent. The figure printed here is rounded to one decimal place, so a cost small enough beside the price prints as the whole hundred with that cost still in it. A row whose cost is nothing, with a price on it, is a margin of exactly one hundred. A row priced at nothing has no margin at all, and this sheet prints none for it with the reason in words.

The markup

The identical profit as a share of the cost. Its denominator is the cost, which on a profitable row is the lesser of your two figures, so a row's markup is never less than that row's own margin. There is no ceiling on it: a penny of cost against a thousand of price is a markup in the millions of per cent.

Where the two part company

One profit, two denominators. In per cent, which is how both ratios are printed here, the gap between them is a hundred times the profit times itself over the cost times the price, and it is nothing only when the profit is nothing. Taken as plain shares instead of per cents that gap is the quotient alone, with no hundred in it. This is the arithmetic a quoted ratio is most often misread by, and it is why a page earns its place here where a formula does not.

The price a target needs

Read as a margin, the cost divided by one less the target. Read as a markup, the cost times one plus the target. The two answers are two different prices for a target of the identical size, which is the whole point of saying which basis you mean.

Why a margin target stops at ninety-five

As a margin target climbs toward the whole hundred per cent, the price it needs climbs without limit, and at the hundred there is no price at all that reaches it. This page offers the margin basis as far as ninety-five per cent and refuses the rest with its reason printed, instead of returning a figure nobody can charge.

The money to go

The needed price with your typed price taken out of it, signed. A positive figure is money the row has yet to carry; a negative figure is a row already priced past the target typed for it.

That target, written as the other ratio

A target of thirty per cent on the price is one decision written two ways: it is also a target of roughly forty-three per cent on the cost. Both readings come from the one target you typed, and neither is a figure this page chose.

A row still waiting

A row with a cost and no price, or a price and no cost, is a row nobody has finished. It prints nothing of its own and nothing at all is footed while any live row is in that state, so a half-typed list prints the count of what is missing instead of a confident ratio off one row.

FThe four things the arithmetic does not settle

Each of these is yours to decide, and none of them is decided here. The options are set out and this page prints whichever reading you type.

What goes into the cost

A landed cost with freight, duty and breakage in it gives one ratio; the invoice figure alone gives another, on the identical price. Neither is the correct one, and the gap between them often swallows the gap people argue about. Whichever you choose, type it one way down the whole list, because two conventions in one sheet is how a list comes out flattering.

Which figure the target is set on

Trades talk in both ratios and often in one conversation, so a target of forty is two different prices depending on which one is meant. The basis is a term of your own pricing and this page holds none of its own: it prints the price for the basis you choose and that target written the other way, so the two readings sit next to each other.

What a unit is

A case, a dozen, a single jar or a pallet: the ratios hold whichever you pick, because they are ratios of the two figures on the row. The units column only decides what the sheet foots over, so a list that mixes cases and singles foots to a number that means whatever that mixture means.

What to do with a row the sheet prints in the negative

A price typed beneath its own cost prints a negative profit, a negative margin and a negative markup, and this page prints them as negatives instead of hiding them. Whether that row is a loss leader, a clearance, a mistake in the typing or a supplier increase nobody has passed on is not something arithmetic can tell you, and nothing here recommends what to do about it.

GWhat this sheet will not do

• It names no ratio as the right one. There is no typical figure, no standard figure, no industry figure and no healthy figure anywhere on it, and every target it prints a price for is one you typed.
• It holds no competitor's price, no market rate and no benchmark of any kind, and it says nothing about whether a price will sell.
• There is no tax in it of any kind, no duty, no platform or marketplace fee and no payment charge. It stops at the two figures on the row.
• It says nothing about profitability, viability, or what any business can afford, and it is advice about nothing. It is a ratio of two figures you typed.
• It holds one sitting in one browser and keeps no history: close the page and the list is gone. The spreadsheet sold beside it is what keeps a dated price list and the cost it was priced on.