Total Custom Expenses
What one expense category costs in total — the fixed part plus the part that moves with sales.
What it means
Total Custom Expenses is what a single expense category cost you over the selected period: its Variable Custom ExpensesVariable Custom ExpensesSee the full entry. plus its Fixed Custom ExpensesFixed Custom ExpensesSee the full entry., in your store currency. It sits on the Custom Expenses by Category table, one row per sub-category. Only costs someone entered by hand on Cost Settings appear here — nothing arrives automatically, so a category nobody filled in reads as zero.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Total Custom Expenses = Fixed Custom Expenses + Variable Custom Expenses, for one category over the period you've selected.
Fixed entries repeat whatever the month does — rent, salaries, a software subscription. Variable entries move with sales — an agency on a percentage, a per-order pick fee, a commission.
Worked example. Fulfilment holds a €2,400 monthly warehouse charge (fixed) and a €0.55 pick fee on 4,000 orders (variable, €2,200). Total Custom Expenses = €4,600.
Now halve the orders. The variable half falls to €1,100 and the total to €3,500, while the €2,400 doesn't move at all. That's why the two halves are worth reading separately — the total alone can't tell you what a slow month costs.
It answers the question
What does this part of the business cost to run, once the bills that repeat are added to the costs that scale? It's the per-category version of the store-wide Custom ExpensesCustom ExpensesSee the full entry. figure, and it's where the answer becomes something you can act on.
Why it matters
Decisions happen at category level. "Costs are up" is not something anyone can do anything with; "fulfilment is up and three quarters of it doesn't move with sales" tells you exactly which contract to reopen.
The split behind the total is the other half of the value. A category that is mostly fixed costs the same in your worst month as your best, so those rows are the ones that turn a quiet quarter into a loss. A category that is mostly variable shrinks on its own when sales do, and needs far less watching.
What good looks like
There's no standard amount, and no benchmark applies — it depends on your team, your tools and whether you hold your own stock. Two checks work. Is the category growing more slowly than Total SalesTotal SalesYour true top line and the anchor for every efficiency metric.? And does its fixed-to-variable split match how you'd describe the cost out loud? For something graded, % Custom Expenses% Custom ExpensesHow much of sales your extra costs consume.Under 12% is healthy puts the store-wide total against sales and does carry a healthy band.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Start with the biggest row | Sort the table by this column and work on the top category only, ignoring the rest for now | One renegotiation worth more than ten small cancellations | 2–4 weeks | The biggest category is usually load-bearing — warehousing, payroll, the agency. Customers feel cuts there before your accounts do. |
| Fast Check the entries are filed in the right half | Confirm each cost sits in the right sub-category, and that fixed commitments aren't entered as variable ones | The same total, split correctly | 1 week | Nothing changes on the bottom line, so it feels like wasted work — right up until a slow month proves which half was which. |
| Slow Move a fixed row onto a variable footing | Swap a flat retainer or fixed fee for a rate that moves with orders or sales | The category shrinks by itself in quiet months | 1 quarter | Strong months cost more, and over a growing year the rate can total more than the flat fee ever would have. |
| Slow Grow into the fixed half you already pay for | Push more volume through the same space, tools and headcount instead of adding to them | The total holds flat while sales rise | 1–2 quarters | The people and equipment absorbing that volume wear out. The saving lands months before the recruitment or replacement bill does. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
The total says what the category cost. The two halves behind it say what it will cost when the month changes.
Growing on both legs
More activity and more commitment at once. Fair enough while sales grew faster; a warning the moment they didn't.
The expensive shape
Commitments grew while the work they support shrank. This is the pattern that quietly turns a slow quarter into a loss.
Cost that follows the work
You're paying more only because you're doing more. The safest way for a category to grow, and the easiest to unwind.
Quieter month
Both halves fell, which usually means a smaller month rather than a smarter one. A forgotten entry produces exactly this shape too.
The euro total says what you spent; the share says whether the shop can carry it. Spending more on a category is fine if sales grew enough that the percentage fell, and a problem if it rose. The total on its own can't tell those two apart.
The pair gives you the category's downside. Divide fixed by total and you have the share of that cost you'd still be paying in a month with half the orders — which is the only version of the number that matters when sales dip.
Common misreads
It's everything someone typed in for it. Product cost, shipping and payment fees are tracked on their own lines elsewhere, so a category here is never the full cost of that part of the business.
Zero means no entry, not no cost. There's no default list of expenses, and an empty category makes every profit line below it look better than it is.
Backwards. A small variable half means almost none of the cost falls away when sales do — those are the categories that hurt most in a quiet quarter, not the ones to relax about.
Also called
Category running costs · overheads by category · operating expenses by category
See yoursEvery expense category for the period, with its variable and fixed halves sitting beside the total.
Open Custom Expenses Analytics →