Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend
What the shop costs to run, once the marketing entries are taken out.
What it means
Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend is the total of the entries on Cost Settings you did not tick as ad spend — rent, payroll, software, insurance, fulfilment, anything you typed in that isn't marketing. Fixed and variable entries both count. This line and Custom Expenses Ad SpendCustom Expenses Ad SpendSee the full entry. add up to Custom ExpensesCustom ExpensesSee the full entry., and the tick box is the only thing deciding which side an entry falls on.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend are daily amounts with a date range — rent, salaries, software — counted only for the days that fall inside the period you're viewing.
Variable Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend move with the business: a percentage of Total Sales, or an amount per order, scaled by how much of the range the entry covers.
Worked example. Fixed: €100 a day of rent and €500 a day of payroll across 30 days = €18,000. Variable: a €1.20 pick fee on 4,000 orders = €4,800. Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend = €22,800. With nothing tagged as ad spend, Custom Expenses reads the same €22,800 and the ad-tagged line sits at €0.
Nothing arrives here on its own. Every euro in the total is one somebody typed in, which makes a short list the usual reason this line looks cheap.
It answers the question
What does the shop cost to run before any marketing? This is the base that stays whether you advertise or not, so it's the line that decides how much profit the advertising has to produce before you're level.
Why it matters
It separates two costs that behave nothing alike. Marketing spend is a decision you remake every week; this is a base that mostly doesn't move, and a base that doesn't move is what turns a slow month into a loss.
It's also the half no efficiency figure sees. MER, ROAS and NCPA are all built on ad spend, so a store can look sharp on every marketing number while this line quietly outgrows the sales carrying it. Net ProfitNet ProfitThe bottom line you take home. is where that shows up, and by then the month is over.
What good looks like
There's no standard euro amount — it depends on your team, your tools, and whether you hold your own stock. Judge it as a share and as a trend. As a share, % Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend% Custom Expenses excl. Ad SpendExcludes all custom expenses marked as Ad Spend. puts it against Total SalesTotal SalesYour true top line and the anchor for every efficiency metric. so periods of different sizes compare fairly. As a trend, the test is whether it grows more slowly than Total Sales does. A base growing faster than the revenue paying for it is the shape that ends in a loss, whatever the euro figure looks like today.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Fix the tagging first | Tick the ad-spend box on the marketing entries currently sitting in this line | This line falls, the ad-tagged line rises, Custom Expenses and Net Profit unchanged | An afternoon | Nothing in the business changed, so a comparison spanning the edit shows a fall that isn't real. Note the date you did it. |
| Fast Give every entry its real dates | Set the start and end dates each fixed entry actually applies to, since costs are counted per day of overlap | Periods stop jumping for reasons nobody can explain | An afternoon | Correcting a date reshapes closed periods too, so a report you already sent no longer matches what the app now shows. |
| Fast Cancel what nobody opened | List the software entries and drop the subscriptions with no active user behind them | The fixed side of the total falls | 1–2 weeks | Some apps quietly hold a flow, a feed or a widget together. One wrong cancellation costs more revenue than the whole audit saves. |
| Slow Re-tender the largest single entry | Take warehousing, fulfilment or the biggest service line to two competitors before renewal | A smaller number for the same work | 1 quarter | A switch costs weeks of handover and service usually dips through it, so refunds and support load rise before the saving lands. |
Two of these fix the number and two fix the truth behind it. Do the truth ones first, or you'll act on a figure that was never right.
Read it with
Overhead is only a problem next to the revenue carrying it. Read the two together or you can't tell which half moved.
A bigger shop on a smaller base
Costs fell while revenue grew, and the whole gap lands on Net Profit. It's also exactly what a forgotten entry looks like, so check both.
Overhead growing with the shop
Some rise is fair — more orders need more people and more space. It's a problem only when this line grows faster than the sales paying for it.
Wound down with the period
Costs came down alongside a quieter period. Deliberate trimming and a lapsed date range look identical from here.
Fixed costs on a shrinking shop
The bills grew while the revenue paying them fell. This corner becomes a loss faster than any other, because none of it shrinks on its own.
The split says what kind of business the overhead belongs to. The same total looks like a lean shop with an expensive agency, or a heavy operation that barely advertises, and only the two lines apart tell you which. If one moves while the other moves the opposite way and the total holds, nothing was spent — something was retagged.
These move one for one: a euro added here is a euro off the bottom line with nothing in between. The pair also catches the accuracy problem. A Net Profit that looks too healthy beside a short entry list usually means the list is short, not that the month was good.
Common misreads
Only the ones somebody entered. There's no default list, so anything never typed on Cost Settings is missing from every profit line beneath it.
It excludes the entries you tagged as ad spend. An agency retainer nobody ever ticked is sitting in this line right now, quietly counted as overhead.
Check the tagging and the dates before celebrating. Moving an entry to the ad-spend side, or shortening its date range, produces the same fall with nothing saved.
Also called
Non-ad custom expenses · overheads excluding marketing
See yoursYour non-marketing custom expenses for the period, split from the entries you tagged as ad spend.
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