Small Order Cost Tracker Spreadsheet | Minimum Order Value Calculator Excel Google Sheets Template | Cost to Serve by Order Size

📦 SMALL ORDER COST TRACKER — EXCEL & GOOGLE SHEETS

Everybody knows the margin on the goods.

Almost nobody knows what it costs to serve one order — and the reason that
matters is that most of that cost is the same whether the order is forty
dollars or four thousand.

Which means there is an order value below which you are paying for the
privilege of doing the work. This file finds it.

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NINE LINKED TABS

· Start Here — what each tab expects and where to type.
· Setup — eight numbers, and two short lists you name yourself.
· Orders — one row per order. Seven things typed, nine worked out.
· The Whole Year — gross profit, taken down to what was actually left.
· By Order Size — the tab this file exists for.
· By Channel — which way of taking an order costs the most to serve.
· Cost To Serve — where the money goes, in seven lines.
· Where It Breaks Even — the smallest order worth writing.
· Overview — the whole year on one screen.

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FROM THE WORKED YEAR INSIDE THE FILE

Six channels. 360 orders. One year.

What you invoiced $217,091
Gross profit $51,982
Which is this much of every dollar 23.9%
Cost to serve (243 hours, the van, the invoices) $12,181
WHAT WAS LEFT $39,801
Which is this much of every dollar 18.3%
The average order $603
It costs this to serve one $33.83

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23.9%. AND 18.3%.

The gap is $12,181 and it is not overheads. It is the cost of serving three
hundred and sixty separate orders: taking them, picking them, driving them out
and invoicing them.

Every business knows the first number. Very few can put their hand on the
second.

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THE LADDER

Under $50 51 orders -$14.84 each -47.1% of what came in
$50 to $100 57 -$7.36 -10.1%
$100 to $150 39 $3.03 2.5%
$150 to $250 49 $17.29 8.9%
$250 to $500 61 $49.90 14.3%
$500 to $1,000 51 $136.41 19.0%
$1,000 to $2,500 36 $280.56 20.4%
$2,500 and over 16 $1,244.43 22.2%

Same shelves. Same year. Same margin on the goods. The only thing that changed
was how much was on the order.

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A THIRD OF THE ORDERS. A THIRTIETH OF THE MONEY.

A hundred and twenty orders in the worked year cost more to serve than they
made. Together they were 3.4% of the money — and 29% of the hours.

Small share of the money, large share of the day. That one contrast is what a
minimum order value is really about, and it is the line most people have never
seen written down.

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THE TAB THIS FILE EXISTS FOR

Where It Breaks Even prices the smallest order worth writing, by how many lines
are on it and by whether you deliver it.

$111 delivered. $80 if they collect. On four lines, at this business's own
numbers.

It runs on the eight numbers in Setup, so it works before you have typed a
single order.

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THE PART THAT SURPRISES PEOPLE

One line: the order must be worth $97.
Twenty lines: $189.

Twenty times the picking, and the order only has to be worth twice as much.
One more line costs you five dollars of order value. One more order costs you
ninety-seven.

That is why a big order is not twenty small ones, and it is the whole case for
a minimum in a single sentence.

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57% OF THE COST IS FIXED

Taking the order, picking and packing before the first line, the van and the
invoice. Those four happen once per order and do not care how big it is.

$19.37 of the $33.83 is spent before a single line has been picked.

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FOUR ANSWERS, NOT ONE

A minimum order value is only one of them.

A small-order charge below the line. A collection-only price under a certain
size. A delivery threshold. The gap between $111 and $80 is the van, which is
exactly why "collect it and we will waive the charge" works so well.

The file prices all four off the same table, so you can pick the one your
customers will actually wear.

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$393 A GO. OR $19.71.

By Channel does the same arithmetic by how the order arrived. In the worked
year a rep visit left $393 on the average order and an emergency out-of-hours
call left $19.71.

Same business, same stock, same people. Twenty times apart.

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WHAT YOU ACTUALLY TYPE

Seven things per order: the date, how it came in, what you invoiced, what the
goods cost, how many lines, whether you delivered it, and any extra minutes it
took.

The minutes, the time cost, the van, the invoice, the cost to serve, what was
left, what was left in every dollar and which band it falls in are all worked
out on the row, where you can see them.

Every rate comes from Setup, so changing one reprices the whole year.

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WHAT YOU GET

Two workbooks and a guide. One workbook has the year above already filled in,
so you can see what every column expects before you touch anything. The second
is the same file completely blank — same nine tabs, same formulas — ready for
your own orders from the first row. The guide is a plain-English PDF.

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EXCEL AND GOOGLE SHEETS

Built as .xlsx. Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and Google Sheets
through File → Import → Upload. LibreOffice too. No macros, no add-ons, no
account to create, nothing to install, no subscription. You download a file and
it is yours.

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QUESTIONS PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK

We are not a wholesaler.
It works anywhere an order has a fixed cost of existing: a trade counter, a
distributor, a print shop, a parts supplier, a bakery with delivery rounds, a
maker selling both wholesale and retail, anyone who packs and posts.

We do not know our minutes.
Nobody does at first. Time a dozen orders with a watch. It takes an afternoon
and it is the single most valuable thing in this file.

What do we put for the van?
The marginal cost of one more drop — fuel, wear, the driver's hour. Not a share
of the whole fleet. Putting the fleet in makes every delivered order look
terrible and tells you nothing.

Most of our orders go on account, not card.
Then the card fee is a small blended number, and the file says so. Put in what
actually comes off across everything you sell.

What about a small customer who also sends big orders?
That is a different question and this file will not answer it alone. It prices
the order, not the customer. Take the answer into the account review, do not
apply it blindly.

Does it hold personal data?
No. Orders, channels and amounts. There are no customer names anywhere in it.

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WHAT THIS IS NOT

Not an order system, a stock system or an accounts package. Not connected to
anything — nothing syncs, nothing logs in. It does not know your prices, your
customers or your suppliers. Not legal or accounting advice, and not advice on
what to charge.

It will not tell you what your minimum should be. It will tell you what every
order below it is costing you today.

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Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the
buyer protection are all handled by Etsy. I never ask for access to anything —
no password, no accounts login, no bank feed. You download a file; that is the
whole transaction.

The example business, its channels and its figures are invented. The arithmetic
behind every number is not.