Expenses
Adding your running costs, how monthly costs are split across shorter periods, and editing an amount later.
Expenses are your running costs: software, rent, salaries, freelancers, agency fees, packaging. Anything that is not the cost of the products themselves, your payment fees, or your ads.
Everything you add here feeds straight into net profit on the Profit and Loss screen.
One-off or recurring
A one-off expense counts on the date you give it, and only shows up in periods that include that date.
A recurring expense repeats every month. Add it once, with a start date, and leave the end date empty if it is ongoing.
Why does my monthly cost show an odd number?
Because we split it across the period you are looking at.
If you pay 300 a month for a tool and you are looking at a fifteen-day period in a thirty-day month, that tool shows as 150. It is half the month, so it is half the cost.
This is what makes short periods honest. Your Monday-to-Sunday profit should carry a week of your rent, not none of it and not all of it.
Changing an amount later
When you edit a recurring expense, we ask whether it was always that amount or whether it changed on a certain date.
It was always this is the usual answer. It corrects the number everywhere, including past periods. Use it when you are fixing a mistake.
It changed on this date keeps your history as it was. Periods before that date keep the old amount. Use it when something genuinely went up, like a rent increase. We will remind you that older totals will not move.
Categories
You can name categories whatever you like, with one exception worth knowing: anything you file under Shipping is picked up by the Profit and Loss screen and shown against what you charged customers for delivery. Spell it the same way each time and that comparison works.
Costs in another currency
If a cost is in a different currency from the one your store reports in, we convert it for you and use the rate from the end of the period, so the figure does not drift every time you look at it.
If we cannot get a rate, we leave the row out of the total and tell you which one it was, rather than counting £100 as $100. That is also why it can hold up your net profit.
Sending it to your accountant
The export lists every cost that applied in the period, with the exact amount used, grouped by category, with a total at the bottom. That total matches the expenses line on your Profit and Loss, so you are both looking at the same sums.
Related
Still stuck? Send us a message — we reply by email, usually the same day.