Profitability & Cost Transparency
A healthy blended margin can hide products and customers that lose money on every order. We allocate costs to the sales that caused them so those losses become visible.
Questions we help answer
- Which products, channels and customers make money once every cost is allocated?
- Is our advertising profitable on recorded orders, or only on platform-reported revenue?
- What are we paying for software, platforms and services that nobody uses?
- How much do returns, payment fees and shipping really cost us per order?
- Where should we raise prices, cut a range or stop selling?
What we do
Contribution analysis
Contribution margin by product, channel, market and customer segment, with variable costs allocated from source records.
Advertising profitability
Advertising spend matched to recorded orders and margin, so return on spend is measured on what the business kept.
Recurring cost review
Software, platform, advertising and supplier charges listed from bank and card records, with unused subscriptions and unapproved charges identified.
Range and pricing decisions
Products and customers ranked by contribution, with options to reprice, redesign or drop each loss-making line.
- How an engagement with THEFOCUS startsDiscuss this with us
How we approach it
- 01
Allocate from records
Shipping, fees, returns and advertising are allocated using order-level data wherever it exists, and stated allocation keys where it does not.
- 02
Use recorded revenue
Profitability is calculated on orders recorded by the business and money received, with platform-reported figures shown beside them for comparison.
- 03
Test the conclusion
Before a line is dropped or repriced, we check whether the loss comes from the product or from how its costs were allocated.
Relevant industries
How an engagement with THEFOCUS starts
A first conversation is about your situation. If there is a fit, we propose a scoped diagnostic with a fixed deliverable before any larger commitment.
Discuss this with us01
A working conversation
Forty-five minutes with the person who would lead the work. We ask about the decision, the systems behind it and the deadline.
02
A scoped diagnostic
Read-only access, a fixed timeframe and a written finding: what the records show, what it costs and what to change first.
03
A plan you can act on
Changes, owners, measures and exclusions in writing. The same team then builds and measures, or hands over cleanly.
- One accountable team
- The people who diagnose also build the systems and measure the result.
- Partners chosen per problem
- Independent specializts join for the parts that need them, under one contract.
- Records before dashboards
- Orders, ledgers and logs are reconciled before any recommendation depends on them.
Questions executives ask
How precise is cost allocation?
As precise as the records allow. Costs recorded per order are allocated per order, and the rest use stated keys. Every allocation key is written down so you can change it and see the effect.
Will this tell us which products to drop?
It shows which lines lose money and why. The decision to reprice, redesign or drop a line stays with you, with the options and their effects laid out.
Discuss this with us
A few details help us route your enquiry to the right partner. Fields marked optional can be left blank.