Free tool · The Logistics Files · Works anywhere

Shipment Profit Calculator

Take what you invoiced, take away what you paid out, and the difference looks like your profit. It is not. It is the number before the job has finished costing you. Money you fronted on the client's behalf sat out for weeks. Bank charges came off every foreign transfer. Somebody spent hours chasing a document. A charge you reserved in the offer never made it onto the invoice.

This works out what a finished job actually kept, and it flags the leaks while you can still do something about them. Run it on a job you have already closed and settled, because a job still in progress will lie to you. Nothing you type leaves your device.

Step 1: the job

Tap the ? beside any field for a plain-English explanation.

Job reference Your own file number, so you can find this again. It never leaves your device.

Client Who the job was for. Useful when you start comparing clients against each other, which is where this tool earns its keep.

Currency Use one currency for the whole page. If the job ran in two currencies, convert everything to one of them first and put any difference in the exchange gain or loss box in Step 5.

Date you first spent money on it The day the first cost went out, which is usually well before you invoiced anything.

Date the client's payment cleared Not the invoice date. The day the money actually landed. The gap between these two dates is the real length of the job, and it is what the finance cost is calculated on.

Step 2: what you invoiced

Every line on your invoice to the client, including the third-party charges you passed on. Leave tax out: you collect it and hand it over, so it is never yours.

Step 3: what you paid out

Every bill you settled on this job: the carrier, the terminal, the trucker, the agent, the permits. Tick fronted where you paid it out of your own money before the client reimbursed you, because that money has a cost and Step 4 works it out.

Step 4: the money you fronted

Days your money was out From the day you paid the third party to the day the client reimbursed you. If you are not sure, count from your payment date to the date their payment cleared. Most forwarders underestimate this badly.

Yearly cost of that money (%) Your overdraft or loan rate if you borrowed it. If it was your own cash, use what it would have earned elsewhere. Put 0 to leave this out, but understand that 0 is rarely the true answer.

Disbursement charge you agreed (%) The percentage you charge for paying third-party bills on the client's behalf. This is the fee that is supposed to pay for the money you just fronted.

Did you actually invoice it? Be honest here. A disbursement charge reserved in the offer and then left off the invoice is one of the most common quiet losses in freight forwarding, because nobody notices money that was never billed.

Step 5: the things that never reach the invoice

Bank charges Transfer fees, correspondent bank deductions, and the spread you lost buying foreign currency. Small on one job, large across a year, and almost never charged to anyone.

Exchange gain or loss Where you sold in one currency and paid in another, and the rate moved between the two. Put a positive number if you gained, a negative number if you lost.

Hours your team spent on this job Coordination, chasing, corrections, follow-up calls. Count the whole file honestly, not just the difficult day. A job that took three times the normal effort earned less than the invoice suggests.

Cost of one staff hour Roughly what an hour of your team costs the business, including everything you pay to keep them there. Put 0 to leave staff time out, but the number is never really 0.

Anything written off Charges you absorbed rather than have an awkward conversation about: a small correction fee, a waiting charge, a re-delivery. This box is where the difference between a firm business and a soft one shows up.

Step 6: what the job actually kept

This is a management view, not your accounts. It exists to show you where a job leaks, not to replace your bookkeeping. Overheads, tax and anything not entered above are not in it.

Tap a heading to read it.

Gross profit is not what you kept

Almost every freight business measures itself on the gap between what it invoiced and what it paid out. That number is useful, but it is the beginning of the analysis, not the end of it, and treating it as the end is how a company grows its turnover while its bank balance shrinks.

Four things sit between that number and the money you actually keep, and none of them appear on any invoice.

The money you fronted. You paid the terminal in week one and the client paid you in week nine. For eight weeks that was your money doing nothing, and if you borrowed it, it was your money costing you interest. On a job with large third-party charges this can quietly take a fifth of the profit.

The bank. Every foreign transfer costs a fee and loses a little on the rate. Nobody bills it to anyone. It just goes.

The hours. A job that needed forty emails and two corrections earned the same invoice as one that ran cleanly, and cost you far more to deliver. Until you count the hours you cannot tell the two apart, so you keep taking the difficult work at the easy price.

The charges you never billed. A disbursement fee reserved in the offer and left off the invoice. A waiting charge absorbed to keep the peace. These do not feel like losses because no money left the building. They are still losses.

The number nobody looks at

Two jobs, same profit. One took twenty days from first payment out to money in. The other took a hundred and twenty. They are not the same job and they are not equally good business, but a margin percentage cannot tell them apart, so most companies never notice.

Profit per day is what tells them apart. It is the plainest way to see that slow money is expensive money. Once you can see it, a client who pays in thirty days is worth taking at a lower rate than one who pays in ninety, and that changes how you sell.

What to do with a bad result

Do not start by raising your price. Work through the list in order and check the cheap fixes first.

Was every charge actually billed? The commonest single leak is money that was agreed and never invoiced. It costs nothing to fix and needs no conversation with the client.

Did you have to front so much? Ask for statutory charges in advance, or open a float account the client funds. Both are normal and both are usually agreed if you simply ask.

How long did the money take to come back? Payment terms are a price. A client who pays in ninety days is buying finance from you, and if that is not priced in, you are giving it away.

Was it the job or was it the client? Run this on ten closed files and you will usually find that most of your profit comes from a handful of accounts, and one or two clients are quietly costing you money. That is the finding that changes a business.

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