How to work out profit after ads on Shopify
The short answer
Profit after ads is sales minus product costs, shipping you paid, payment fees and ad spend. Shopify knows your orders, refunds and payment fees, and it knows product costs if you filled in “Cost per item”. Shipping you paid and ad spend live elsewhere, so the subtraction has to be put together.
A worked month
| Demo store, one month | Amount |
|---|---|
| Sales, 220 orders | $13,403 |
| Products | −$4,195 |
| Shipping | −$1,144 |
| Payment fees | −$462 |
| Ads | −$4,278 |
| Profit after ads | $3,324 |
The store’s ROAS for the month is $13,403 ÷ $4,278 = 3.13. Its break-even ROAS is 1.76, so the ads made money. Numbers are from a made-up demo store.
Where each number lives
- Sales and refunds: your Shopify orders. Use sales after discounts and refunds, without tax.
- Product cost: the “Cost per item” field on each product variant. Many stores never filled it in.
- Payment fees: in the payouts of your payment provider. A common rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per order.
- Shipping you paid: your carrier or fulfilment bill, not what the customer paid for shipping.
- Ad spend: each ad account: Meta, Google, TikTok.
When a product has no cost
Do not guess one number. Work the profit out twice, once with a low cost and once with a high one, and you get an honest range, for example “$1,772 to $4,105 after ads”. Then fill in the biggest sellers first: three costs usually close most of the gap.
What this profit leaves out
Salaries, rent, software and other fixed costs. Profit after ads is the money your orders and ads produce. Fixed costs come out of it afterwards.
Questions
Does Shopify show profit?
Shopify’s profit reports work from the cost per item you entered on your products. Shipping you paid and ad spend are not part of them, so they show gross profit on products, not profit after ads.
How do I add ad spend?
The simplest way is one total per week from each ad account. Per-campaign rows give you a profit figure and a raise, keep or cut decision for each campaign.
How far back should I look?
30 to 60 days is enough to steer by. Longer periods hide what changed last week.
Check it on your own numbers. The break-even ROAS calculator is free and needs no sign-up. ProfitNod works the same numbers out from your store’s real orders, inside Shopify.
Read next
- ROAS vs profit: why a 3.1 ROAS can lose money
- Can ChatGPT or Claude tell you your Shopify store’s profit?
By the ProfitNod team. Updated 15 November 2026. Figures are worked examples or come from a made-up demo store.