Historical Profit

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What question it answers

“How much did I earn each month?” Shows, month by month, what was sold, the cost of what was sold, the profit, and the margin as a percentage — the summary that used to require cross-checking sales against purchases by hand.

Why that number used to change on its own

Until this week, a month’s profit was recalculated using today’s cost. If a product’s cost went up in October, September’s profit — already closed and already handed to the accountant — would change on its own the next time someone opened the report. Now each month freezes as soon as it ends, with the cost the product had at that time, and that number never moves again.

Months marked “Estimated”

Months before this week didn’t save the exact cost of each sale at the time, so their cost was rebuilt from the last purchase before that close. Those months carry an Estimated tag next to the cost. From here on, every month that closes uses the real cost the product had on the day of the sale, with no tag.

What each row shows

Period, sold, returns, net sold, cost, gross profit, margin %, purchases for the month, and document count. When a month doesn’t have cost on record for all of its sales, that row’s profit and margin show blank instead of zero — a month with no data and a month with no profit are different things, and mixing them up is worse than leaving it blank.

The chart

Below the table, the month-by-month trend of profit and margin. If your business handles more than one currency, there’s one chart per currency — they’re never mixed on the same axis, because a sale in dollars and a sale in colones don’t add up or plot together.

Requires the view-cost permission

This report shows the cost of each product, so only someone with the permission to see cost price can see it. If it doesn’t show up in your menu, that’s why — check with the business administrator.

Good to know

Months with no earlier purchases can end up without a cost. If a product sold before it even had a purchase on record, there’s no cost to pull from, and that month may come back with no calculable profit.

You can’t filter by point of sale. Each month’s close covers the whole business and a currency, not a single point of sale.

You can narrow it down by date range and, if you handle more than one currency, by currency.