Calculate your true e-commerce net profit after returns, ad spend, and shipping costs.
Net Profit
5,500
Delivery Rate
70.0%
Returned Orders
30 orders
Total Revenue
17,500
Total Expenses
12,000
Losing money on ads and returns?
Book a strategy call to save your storeYour ad dashboard says you made a big revenue number; your bank account tells a different story. The gap between the two stories is the nature of cash on delivery: an order is placed, then only part of the orders are actually delivered and paid — yet you paid advertising to bring in all of them, and paid shipping on the delivered and the returned alike. This calculator does not compute «sales»; it computes money that actually landed, after deducting sold goods, full shipping, and ad spend.
That is why two stores with identical revenue can end with one profiting and the other losing: the difference sits in delivery rate, shipping cost, and product margin — the quiet numbers this calculator forces you to face before you raise the ad budget and scale the problem.
From accounts we manage in both markets: delivery rates on ad-driven orders in Egypt commonly move in a 60%–80% range depending on sector, targeting quality, and data accuracy, while Saudi and Gulf rates run relatively higher, especially in major cities. Treat these as orientation ranges, not a rule — your only rule is your own store's rate as reported by your courier.
Total orders received: every order that came in from ads and the site during the period, including the ones that will later return. This is the number your ads and shipping were actually billed against.
Successfully delivered orders: the ones the customer received and paid for. The gap between the two numbers is returns, and their ratio is the «delivery rate» — the quietest decisive number in cash-on-delivery commerce, because it multiplies the efficiency of every ad and shipping pound.
Shipping cost per order: this calculator charges it on total orders, not just delivered ones, because the courier bills you for the trip even when the customer never answers or refuses delivery. This is precisely the line most stores forget when they compute their profit.
Product wholesale cost: deducted on delivered orders only, because a return comes back to your shelf intact and resellable — its real cost to you was shipping and ads, not the goods. Selling price likewise counts as revenue on delivered orders only.
Total ad spend: everything spent to bring in the total orders, not just the delivered ones. That is why true acquisition cost is computed per received order and then judged against the delivery rate — the difference between books that face reality and books that flatter themselves.
The default numbers you see in the calculator above are this example: 100 orders received, 70 delivered, shipping EGP 30 per order, product cost EGP 100 sold at EGP 250, and EGP 2,000 of ad spend. The result breaks down like this:
Revenue (70 × 250)
EGP 17,500
Goods (70 × 100)
EGP 7,000
Shipping (100 × 30)
EGP 3,000
Ad spend
EGP 2,000
Delivery rate
70%
Net profit
+EGP 5,500
Note that almost a third of the orders came back, yet the store still profits — because the per-unit margin (EGP 150) covers shipping and ads with room to spare. Now try it yourself: lower delivered orders in the calculator from 70 to 50, leave everything else untouched, and watch the profit evaporate even though «sales» and ad spend never changed.
A Saudi store sells a product at SAR 220 costing SAR 90, with shipping at SAR 25 per order: 200 orders came in, 170 were delivered (an 85% delivery rate), and SAR 6,000 went to ads:
Revenue (170 × 220)
SAR 37,400
Goods (170 × 90)
SAR 15,300
Shipping (200 × 25)
SAR 5,000
Ad spend
SAR 6,000
Delivery rate
85%
Net profit
+SAR 11,100
Compare with the Egyptian example: moving the delivery rate from 70% to 85% raised the efficiency of every ad riyal, because fixed shipping and ad costs spread across more completed sales. In many stores, investing in delivery rate returns more than the same money spent on additional advertising.
1. Raise the delivery rate. Confirm orders by call or WhatsApp message before dispatch, capture accurate addresses, and follow up on delivery day. Every extra delivery point lands directly on net profit without a single extra unit of ad spend.
2. Recheck your acquisition-cost ceiling. Maximum allowable CPA = (selling price − wholesale cost) × delivery rate − shipping per order. In the Egyptian example: (250 − 100) × 70% − 30 = EGP 75 per received order. If your actual acquisition cost sits above that ceiling, no ad optimization compensates for the equation — the problem is the unit economics, not the campaign.
3. Attack the cause of returns themselves. More accurate product descriptions, clearer size tables, and honest photos — a return caused by wrong expectations was manufactured by your own content, and preventing it is far cheaper than a return caused by a hesitant customer. Ask your courier for refusal reasons and fix the top two first.
The delivery rate is not a soft metric — it has a computable price. In the Egyptian example above: each extra delivery point on 100 orders means one more delivered order at EGP 150 margin (250 selling price − 100 wholesale), while shipping is already paid on all of them, so it does not rise. Moving from 70% to 75% on the same 100 orders = +EGP 750 net profit without one extra unit of ad spend. In the Saudi example: a point on 200 orders = two orders × SAR 130 margin = +SAR 260. Once a point has a price, decisions like hiring an order-confirmation agent or improving data quality stop being «admin cost» and become investments with a known return.
From the same equation you can compute the delivery rate below which your store loses money no matter what: break-even delivered orders = (shipping × total orders + ad spend) ÷ (selling price − wholesale). In the Egyptian example: (3,000 + 2,000) ÷ 150 = 33 orders out of 100 — any delivery rate under 33% is a guaranteed loss at these prices. Know your break-even number before the season, not after it.
This calculator is built on cash-on-delivery logic because that is the reality of most Egyptian stores and a large share of Gulf ones. With prepaid card or wallet payment, the picture changes in three places: the «delivery rate» approaches the payment success rate because the customer has already paid, returns turn into refunds and exchanges at a lower rate and a different reverse cost, and your cash returns faster, so it can be recycled into stock and ads instead of waiting on courier collection.
The practical consequence: a prepaid store can operate on a thinner margin than a COD store selling the same product, because the returns and wasted-shipping burden is lower. And if your store is mixed — part prepaid, part COD — run each channel through the calculator separately and add the two results; blending them into one calculation produces an average that describes neither, and usually hides the fact that the COD channel is eating the prepaid channel's profit.
Total returns enter this calculator as one number, but in reality they are two completely different families in cause, cure, and cost. Family one: orders never delivered at all — the customer did not answer the courier, the address was wrong, or they changed their mind before arrival. That is pure shipping-and-ads loss, and its cure is operational: pre-dispatch confirmation, data quality, and delivery-day follow-up. Family two: orders delivered and then returned — wrong size, quality below expectation, or a description that promised more than the product. These cost more (outbound and reverse shipping plus handling and inspection), and their cure sits in the content and the product itself.
Apply it to the Egyptian example: if the 30 returns were 22 refusals and 8 quality returns, the priority is not one thing. The 22 refusals cost you 22 × 30 = EGP 660 of shipping alone, before counting their ads — and they are cured by confirmation calls and targeting quality. The 8 quality returns each carry outbound plus reverse shipping and handling, and their cause usually lives on the product page. Without this split, you will spend your «reduce returns» budget on the wrong cure for the wrong family.
The practical step: request the courier's failed-delivery reason report, tie it to your orders weekly, and log quality returns separately in your internal sheet. Run the calculator once with the total figure and once as if the bigger family were fixed — the difference between the two results is the true ceiling on what a «reduce returns» project is worth before you start it.
1. Net profit per received order is positive two weeks running. One positive week can be seasonal luck; two in a row, computed the same way, is a firmer signal.
2. The delivery rate is stable or rising. Scaling on a falling delivery rate multiplies returns at exactly the same speed it multiplies sales.
3. Acquisition cost sits below its computed ceiling with a safety margin. Because acquisition cost usually rises as you scale, enter the phase below the ceiling, not at it.
4. Stock and fulfilment can absorb double the volume. A stockout or shipping delays during scaling week turn a winning campaign into bad reviews and higher returns.
5. Cash flow covers the COD cycle. Under COD you spend on ads and shipping today and collect days or weeks later; scaling without a cash reserve strangles a store that is profitable on paper.
Five points — if any one fails, fixing it now is cheaper than after the budget doubles, because every unit-economics problem grows at exactly the same rate as the spend.
There is no separate fees field: the calculator deducts product cost on delivered orders, shipping on every order, and your total ad spend. If you sell through a marketplace or payment gateway that takes a commission on each delivered order, add the average commission per order to the wholesale product cost — because product cost is only counted on delivered orders, the result stays accurate without changing any formula.
The calculator gives you net profit and total revenue (delivered orders × selling price). Your net margin = net profit ÷ total revenue × 100. Per order, subtract the wholesale cost from the selling price to get your margin before shipping and ads — the number that sets the maximum ad cost you can afford per order.
Because under cash on delivery you pay shipping on a returned or refused order just as you do on a delivered one — the courier does not refund the failed trip. The calculator therefore multiplies the shipping cost by all received orders, which is exactly the line that hides losses for stores that think they are profitable.
The spend for exactly the same period as your order numbers — if the orders are one month, the ad spend must be that same month, taken from Ads Manager. Mixing periods (a month of orders with a week of spend) produces a fictional net profit in either direction, and any scaling decision built on it is blind.
Raise the delivered-orders figure step by step, keeping everything else fixed, until net profit reaches zero — the page itself flags that result as the break-even point, neither profit nor loss. The figure you land on is the minimum delivered orders you must hit at the same spend and prices; anything below it is a loss, however large the total received orders look.
First: the delivery rate itself — a five-point drop in a single week is an early alarm, because it eats profit before any sales report shows it. Second: acquisition cost per received order, not per delivered order — computing it on delivered orders only flatters the picture and hides the returns effect. Third: net profit per received order = net profit ÷ total orders, the only number that belongs next to any budget-increase decision: if it is negative, increasing spend enlarges the loss no matter how green the ad dashboard looks.
The two calculators complete each other: the ROAS calculator shows the efficiency of the advertising itself — clicks, conversion, and revenue — before shipping and returns enter, while this one shows the final outcome after they do. A sound scaling decision passes both: efficient advertising and profitable store economics, not just one of them. And when you want to turn these numbers into an actual growth plan for your store, start with our e-commerce store marketing guide, which lays out the full growth system step by step.