Guide
How to compute your sari-sari store profit
Sales are not profit. Here are the four steps, worked through a real-sized tindahan's month.
The short answer: your profit is sales minus the cost of the goods you sold minus your expenses. Sell ₱10,000 in a month, pay ₱7,500 for the stock behind those sales, spend ₱900 on kuryente, load and plastic bags, and you kept ₱1,600. Most owners only track the first number, which is why a busy store can still run out of money.
Here are the four steps, with a month in a real-sized tindahan as the example.
Step 1: Add up your sales
Every sale, whether it was paid in cash, GCash or taken on utang. Utang is still a sale, it just hasn’t been paid yet. If you write sales in a notebook, total each day and then total the month.
Our example store: ₱48,500 for the month.
Step 2: Take out the cost of the goods you sold
This is what you paid your supplier for the items that left your shelves. Not what you paid for everything you bought this month, and not what is still sitting on the shelf. Only what you sold.
The quick way: for each item, cost per piece × pieces sold. A sachet of shampoo you buy at ₱7 and sell at ₱9, sold 300 times, is ₱2,100 of cost and ₱2,700 of sales.
Our example store: ₱35,200.
Sales minus cost of goods is your gross profit: ₱48,500 − ₱35,200 = ₱13,300. This is the money the store earned before you pay to keep it open.
Step 3: Take out your expenses
The costs of running the store, not of buying stock:
- Kuryente for the ref and the lights
- Load and wifi
- Plastic bags and other supplies
- Rent, if you pay any
- Salary, if someone helps you at the counter
- Repairs, permits and fees
Our example store: kuryente ₱2,400, load and wifi ₱600, bags and supplies ₱450, helper ₱2,000, permits ₱150 — ₱5,600.
Step 4: What is left is your profit
Gross profit minus expenses is your net income, the real profit.
₱13,300 − ₱5,600 = ₱7,700 for the month.
| Sales | ₱48,500 |
|---|---|
| Cost of goods sold | −₱35,200 |
| Gross profit | ₱13,300 |
| Expenses | −₱5,600 |
| Net income (your profit) | ₱7,700 |
That ₱7,700 is 15.9% of sales. For a sari-sari store, anywhere from about 10% to 20% is normal, depending on what you sell. Cigarettes and load earn thin margins; sachets, snacks and drinks earn more.
Copy this monthly tracker
Write these lines in a notebook, or copy them into a spreadsheet. Fill it in on the same date every month so the months can be compared.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Sales (cash + GCash + utang) | |
| Cost of goods sold | |
| Gross profit | |
| Kuryente | |
| Load and wifi | |
| Bags and supplies | |
| Rent | |
| Salary | |
| Other (permits, repairs) | |
| Total expenses | |
| Net income |
Three things that quietly eat the profit
Utang you never collect. An uncollected utang is a sale you paid for but never got paid for. Keep a list per suki, with the date, and follow up. If someone owes you ₱500 for two months, that is ₱500 of your puhunan sitting in their kitchen.
Taking stock or cash for the house. A can of milk taken for the family is not free; it is stock you paid for. Write it down, even if you do not pay yourself back, so your figures stay honest.
Counting puhunan as profit. The money in the drawer is not yours to keep. Most of it has to buy the next delivery. Only what is left after Step 4 is profit.
How often should you compute this?
Sales daily, profit monthly. Daily sales take a minute and tell you whether today was good. The full computation once a month tells you whether the store is actually earning.
If you also want the stock side of this — what is on the shelf and what it cost — see what Dell’s Accounting tracks.