Selling 100 orders a month without knowing your profit — the most common problem for online sellers

7 min read

“Bán được 100 đơn/tháng, nhưng ngồi tính lại thì không biết mình lãi bao nhiêu. Cứ cảm giác có tiền vào nhưng cuối tháng thấy trống.”

— A familiar saying within the Shopee, TikTok Shop seller community

In this article

1. Doanh thu và lợi nhuận khác nhau thế nào?
2. Những chi phí ẩn nào ăn mòn lợi nhuận bán hàng online?
3. The "scale" trap — selling more but profiting less
4. Cash Flow ≠ Profit — When does money truly become yours?
5. Làm sao quản lý lợi nhuận bán online bằng Excel?
6. Frequently Asked Questions

Revenue and Profit — two concepts confused daily

Revenue is the money customers pay you. Profit is the money left after deducting all costs to fulfill that order. Sounds simple — but in the reality of online selling, this distinction is surprisingly overlooked.

Sellers often look at the revenue figures on marketplace dashboards — Shopee, TikTok Shop, or their website — and use them to assess “whether this month was good or bad”. But that figure doesn't account for platform fees, shipping costs, advertising expenses, returns, or even the cost of goods sold. As a result, sellers are running their businesses based on systematically skewed data.

It's not due to a lack of intelligence—it's because the numbers are genuinely difficult to consolidate. Platform fees are in the platform's financial reports. Return shipping fees are in a separate reconciliation statement. Advertising costs are in the Ads account. To know your true profit, you have to pull data from at least 4–5 different sources and calculate it manually.

5 Hidden Costs Eroding Your Profits

For an order priced at 200.000đ, here's what actually happens before the money reaches the seller's hands:

For a product with a COGS of 120.000đ, a 200.000đ order actually only yields a profit of about 27.000đ — or 13.5%. If the return rate is higher than usual in a month, that number could drop to 0 or even negative, even as the revenue dashboard still looks healthy.

The "scale" trap — selling more but profiting less

When revenue increases, the natural instinct is to boost ad budgets to continue the growth momentum. This logic is sound — but only if the profit margin per order is positive and stable. If you don't know that number, then “scaling” ads is essentially multiplying losses.

The reason this trap occurs is: marginal costs increase with volume — especially ads and return rates. When scaling, the pool of “easy-to-convert” customers is exhausted, the system has to target more broadly, CPO (cost per order) increases, while the profit margin isn't enough to compensate. Sellers look at the monthly revenue and see a positive trend, but actual profit is quietly shrinking.

Cash Flow ≠ Profit — When does money truly become yours?

In COD (Cash on Delivery) sales, money doesn't come in immediately after an order is confirmed. The platform holds the money for 7–14 days for reconciliation — during which time, the money isn't yet the seller's, even if the order has been successfully delivered. Not to mention, a portion of orders will be returned during that cycle, and the platform will deduct it accordingly.

Profit is an accounting concept. Cash flow is the reality. A shop with positive profit can still go bankrupt due to negative cash flow — if new inventory needs to be purchased for a campaign before the previous sales' money has arrived.

— A fundamental financial principle, applicable to both small businesses and large enterprises.

The cash cycle in e-commerce typically spans 3–4 weeks: inventory purchase → packaging → sale → delivery → reconciliation → cash received. During these 3–4 weeks, capital gets "stuck" in inventory and receivables from platforms. If growing rapidly without calculating cash flow, sellers will constantly find themselves in a state of "high revenue, empty bank account" — not because of losses, but because cash hasn't arrived in time.

Structured Excel — a financial solution for online sellers

No need for complex accounting software. Online sellers need a compact yet sufficiently accurate tool to answer 3 core questions: How much profit did we make this month? Which costs are unusually high? What will next week's cash flow look like?

E-Com Profit & Cashflow Navigator is built with this exact structure — simple data entry from platform reports, automatic calculation of true profit after all costs, and weekly cash flow projections. Suitable for shops selling 50–500 orders/month on Shopee, TikTok Shop, or their own website.

Frequently Asked Questions

I sell on multiple platforms, can I use it?

Yes. The template has separate sheets for each sales channel — Shopee, TikTok Shop, website — with different fee structures tailored to each platform. The dashboard aggregates data by product and by channel for performance comparison.

I'm not good at Excel, can I use it?

The template is designed for minimalist data entry — primarily filling in numbers in pre-marked cells. No need to know how to write formulas. The accompanying guide includes a video tutorial for first-time setup under 30 minutes.

How does a high return rate affect your profit figures?

Very significant—and this is the most common blind spot. A template to calculate return shipping costs, costs of faulty/damaged goods after return, and adjust actual profit based on the actual monthly return rate. You'll immediately see which products are eroding your profits due to high return rates.

How does the cash flow forecast work?

You input the settlement cycle for each platform (7 days, 14 days…) and your projected inventory purchase schedule. The template automatically projects incoming funds weekly and compares them with your payable expenses — helping you foresee which weeks will have cash shortages so you can prepare.

Does the template support product-level analysis?

Yes. One of the most frequently used features is the profit-by-SKU table — which shows which products are genuinely contributing to profit and which ones are dragging down the overall profit despite high sales. This provides the basis for deciding whether to promote, cut back, or adjust the price of each product.