Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend
What the shop costs to keep open, before any marketing.
What it means
Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend is the euro total of your flat entered costs with every ad-spend-tagged entry removed. Rent, payroll, software, insurance, accounting — the costs of existing rather than of selling. Like all fixed entries, they're charged per day across your date range.
It's one half of a clean split: this line plus Fixed Custom Expenses Ad SpendFixed Custom Expenses Ad SpendSee the full entry. equals Fixed Custom ExpensesFixed Custom ExpensesSee the full entry., with the ad-spend tag on each entry deciding which side it falls on.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
What's in it. Every fixed expense you did not mark as ad spend, converted to a daily amount and applied to the days your range covers.
Worked example. Five fixed entries totalling €21,600 a month: rent €3,000, payroll €12,000, software €900, a €4,200 agency retainer and a €1,500 influencer fee, with the last two tagged as ad spend.
This line is 21,600 − 5,700 = €15,900 for a full month, or €530 a day. A ten-day range reads €5,300.
It answers the question
What does it cost to keep the doors open before you spend a euro attracting anyone? This is the figure your sales have to clear first, every single day, whether or not you advertise.
Why it matters
It's the one cost line a marketing decision can't move. Change agencies, double the budget, pause every campaign — this number doesn't flinch, which makes it the honest baseline for planning. Contribution from sales has to cover it before anything reaches Net ProfitNet ProfitThe bottom line you take home..
That immovability is also the risk. It's charged every day at the same rate regardless of takings, so in a bad month it's the line that turns a small sales dip into a loss.
What good looks like
There's no standard euro figure — it depends on your team, your tools and whether you hold your own stock. Judge it on shape rather than size. Month to month it should be close to flat; a jump means a new entry, an edited one, or a longer date range, and it's worth knowing which. Against sales, use % Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend% Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad SpendExcludes fixed custom expenses marked as Ad Spend., because a cost holding flat while revenue falls is a rising share and a growing problem, and the euro total alone won't say so.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Cancel the subscriptions nobody uses | List every software entry and check who logged in last month | A visible drop with no effect on sales | 1–2 weeks | Some apps quietly hold a flow, a feed or a review widget together. One wrong cancellation costs more than the whole audit saves. |
| Fast Fix the dates on every entry | End-date the finished contracts and correct start dates on the ones that began mid-period | A number that matches what you actually pay | 1 week | It changes past periods as well as this one, so previously reported profit moves and old exports stop matching. |
| Slow Re-tender your biggest line before it renews | Take warehousing, fulfilment or your largest tool to two competitors ahead of the renewal date | A real reduction on the largest number in the list | 1 quarter | Switching a fulfilment or software partner costs weeks of ramp-up, and service dips through the handover — refunds and complaints tend to rise first. |
| Slow Put more sales through the same base | Grow volume without adding headcount, space or tools | The euro total holds while sales rise past it | 1–2 quarters | The team absorbs the growth long before the headcount does, and the hiring bill arrives all at once when it stops working. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
A flat cost is only ever good or bad relative to the sales carrying it. Read the two together or the euro total tells you nothing.
The base grew with the shop
Some rise is fair: more sales usually need more people and more tools. It's a problem only when the costs grow faster than the revenue paying for them.
Fixed costs on a shrinking shop
The bills grew while the revenue paying them fell. This corner turns into a loss faster than any other, because none of it shrinks on its own.
Leaner and bigger
Costs fell while the shop grew, and the whole gap lands on profit. It's also the shape a forgotten entry produces, so check both.
Trimmed with the month
Costs came down alongside a quieter month. Deliberate trimming and a missing entry look identical here.
Together they're your whole fixed base, split into the cost of existing and the cost of getting customers. Watching the ratio move tells you which way the business is leaning long before either number looks alarming on its own.
Contribution Profit is what's left after the costs each sale carries. Set it against this line and you have the actual question: did this period's sales generate enough to cover the flat cost of running the shop?
Common misreads
It's the fixed, non-marketing part of what you entered by hand. Product cost, shipping, payment fees and every variable expense sit in their own lines, and none of them are in this figure.
Only the fixed entries you tagged. A marketing cost that nobody ticked is still counted here as overhead, which is the most common reason this line looks higher than a store owner expects.
Flat against falling sales is a rising share of every euro you take. The percentage version of this metric is what tells you that; the euro total will sit still while the problem grows.
Also called
Fixed overheads excluding marketing · fixed running costs · non-marketing fixed costs
See yoursYour flat running costs for the selected days, with marketing entries stripped out.
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