% Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend
The share of sales going to fixed running costs, with marketing taken out.
What it means
% Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend is the share of Total SalesTotal SalesYour true top line and the anchor for every efficiency metric. taken by the fixed entries on Cost Settings that you did not tick as Ad Spend — rent, payroll, software, insurance, accounting. It's what the business costs to keep open once marketing is stripped out.
The entries you did tick sit in % Fixed Custom Expenses Ad Spend% Fixed Custom Expenses Ad SpendSee the full entry.. Percentage-based and per-order entries never appear here at all, marketing or not; they're in % Variable Custom Expenses% Variable Custom ExpensesSee the full entry..
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Fixed Custom Expenses excl. Ad Spend is the fixed entries without the Ad Spend tick, charged for the days that overlap your date range. Each entry carries a daily cost, so a 7-day view holds 7 days of the rent rather than the month's invoice.
Total Sales is Gross Sales plus shipping and tax, less discounts and refunds.
Worked example. Rent, payroll and software come to €15,000 for the month and none of it is flagged as Ad Spend. Against €150,000 of Total Sales this reads 15,000 ÷ 150,000 = 10%.
The next month sells €100,000 and not one entry changes. The same €15,000 now reads 15%. Nothing was overspent; the base took a bigger bite of a smaller month.
It answers the question
What does it cost to keep the business running before a single ad is bought, and can this month's sales carry it? This is the number that decides how long a bad quarter can last.
Why it matters
Everything else in your cost base can be turned down. Ad budget goes to zero on a Monday, stock orders can be delayed, a percentage-based fee shrinks on its own when sales do. A lease, a payroll and an annual contract keep billing at the same rate through the worst month you've ever had.
That makes this the honest read on your fixed risk. It's also the line most often wrong, because it's the easiest to leave half-entered — the software gets typed in on day one and the payroll never does.
What good looks like
No bands are published for this one, and none would travel: a business with its own warehouse and staff belongs nowhere near one that outsources both.
The comparison that works is Contribution MarginContribution MarginProfit left after variable costs to fund the business.30% or more is healthy, because contribution is what has to cover this before any profit exists. A 30% Contribution Margin against 10% here leaves 20 points of room. The same 30% against 26% leaves almost nothing, and one slow month turns it negative. Then read your own trend, same season on both sides.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Cancel software nobody opens | Check the recurring tool and app entries against who actually logs in | The daily rate falls within a billing cycle | 1–2 weeks | Some of those tools hold a flow, a feed or a checkout step together. One wrong cancellation costs more revenue than the fees ever saved. |
| Fast End entries for things that stopped | Put an end date on contracts and spaces you no longer use | The daily charge stops from that date | Same week | It doesn't change past periods, and an entry ended earlier than the contract really ran understates your costs and flatters Net Profit. |
| Slow Re-tender the single biggest line | Take warehousing, fulfilment or the lease to two competitors before renewal | A step down in the daily rate | 1 quarter | Switching partners costs weeks of ramp-up and service dips through the handover, so complaints and refunds usually rise before the saving lands. |
| Slow Grow into the base you already pay for | Add sales without adding people, space or contracts | Falls with every point of growth, no cuts required | 1–2 quarters | Growth bought with ads lands in a different line entirely, so this can improve while Net Profit stays exactly where it was. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
This is one half of your fixed cost base. Which half is bigger tells you how quickly you could stop spending if you had to.
The wider column includes the marketing entries; this one doesn't. When the two sit close together, almost none of your fixed base is marketing, so a bad quarter has very little you can switch off. When they're far apart, a large share of what you're committed to is a bet on growth, and bets have notice periods.
Net Profit Margin tells you what survived every cost; this tells you how much of it was decided before the month started. A thin margin sitting above a high fixed share is fragile in a way the margin alone never shows — the same drop in sales that costs one store a point costs this one three.
Common misreads
They were never in it. Platform spend arrives through the connected accounts and doesn't touch this column at all. What's excluded here is the fixed entries you ticked as Ad Spend in Cost Settings.
Total Sales sit in the denominator. A cost base that didn't move reads higher the moment sales fall. Read the euro amount beside it before you go hunting for new spending.
A figure that low almost always means an incomplete list. Payroll and rent are the two most commonly missing, and they're usually the two biggest. Check what's entered before you trust the number.
Also called
Fixed operating cost ratio · fixed overhead excluding marketing · non-marketing fixed cost share
See yoursYour fixed running costs as a share of sales, beside the euro total and the marketing half of the same list.
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