Revenue tells you how much came in. Profit tells you how much you can actually use. Most sellers only track the first one.
Ask most Nigerian sellers how their business is doing and they'll tell you their monthly revenue. Ask them their profit margin and you'll get silence — or a rough guess that's usually wrong.
This isn't a character flaw. It's a system problem. When you're fulfilling orders, restocking, responding to customers every day, there's no natural moment to sit down and subtract everything that went out from everything that came in. So it doesn't happen.
Until something forces the conversation. A bad month, a decision about whether to hire someone, a supplier asking for cash you were sure you had.
What the number actually looks like
Say you made ₦800,000 in sales last month. That feels good.
Now subtract what it actually cost:
You're left with ₦382,000. Less than half of what you thought you had. And that's before you account for your own time.
This breakdown isn't unusual. It's close to average for Nigerian product sellers who haven't set up proper tracking.
Why the WhatsApp note and spreadsheet approach fails
The two tools most sellers reach for: a note to themselves on WhatsApp, or a Google Sheet they open every few weeks.
Both break down the same way. The moment logging takes more than 30 seconds, it gets skipped. The ₦5,000 you handed the dispatch rider in cash doesn't get written down. The petrol for the market run doesn't get recorded because it felt personal even though it wasn't. After a month of that, your numbers are fiction.
The only tracking that works is tracking in the same place you manage everything else — two taps, and the maths happens automatically.
Why the categories matter
Not all expenses hit equally.
Inventory is usually the largest cost for product sellers. If you're spending 55–65% of revenue on restocking, your margin is thin and you need to know that. You can't respond to what you can't see.
Logistics surprises most sellers. When you actually track every GIG order, every Kwik courier, every roll of packing tape, the total is usually 10–15% of revenue. That's real money. Negotiate better rates or switch providers and you feel it immediately.
Marketing is invisible until you track it. The boosted posts, the content creator gifts, the samples that went out — they add up. You need to know what a customer costs you to acquire, because that number tells you whether a promotion is actually profitable or just busy work.
Salary and transport for staff feel personal so they often don't get logged. They are business expenses. They belong in the numbers.
What the number unlocks
Once you know your real profit, you can make real decisions.
Should you restock that new product? Depends on your cash position — which depends on your margin, not your revenue.
Can you hire a full-time packer? Depends on whether the business generates enough net to cover that salary and still leave something.
Is this month's promotion worth running? Depends on whether your margins can absorb a 15% discount without going negative.
Revenue is the number you celebrate. Profit is the number you run the business from.
How to start
Go to Finance in your Myshoplet dashboard. Log expenses by category — inventory, logistics, marketing, salary, utilities, rent, equipment. The Analytics page then shows you net profit for any period you choose.
The first time you log your last 30 days of expenses, it takes about 20 minutes. After that, logging as you go takes two minutes per transaction.
Most people who do it wish they'd started sooner.
Victor Dickson
Founder, Myshoplet · Lagos, Nigeria
Victor built Myshoplet after watching Nigerian sellers lose orders managing WhatsApp manually. He writes about practical e-commerce, AI sales automation, and growing a business in Nigeria.
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