How many sales before you stop losing money?
Enter your price, what a sale costs you and where you sell. Add the bills you pay every month. See the sales a month that cover them, the sales that also pay you, and what a price change does.
Checked by the BaseAcross team.
A $40.00 product sold through Stripe
- Each sale leaves
- $23.74After a $14.00 cost and fees
- Fixed costs
- $1,195.75A month, company included
- Break-even
- 51 salesAbout 1.7 a day
- At 10% more
- 44 salesPriced $44.00
When does your business cover its costs?
Nothing is saved or sent. The example is filled in; replace it with your numbers.
You break even at
51 sales a month
About 1.7 a day, or $2,040.00 in sales. Each sale leaves $23.74 towards your $1,195.75 of fixed costs.
Where one sale goes
- Price
- $40.00
- Fee for where you sell
- −$1.46
- Refunds, averaged
- −$0.80
- The product and postage
- −$14.00
- Left towards fixed costs
- $23.74 (59.4%)
At 80 sales a month
- Profit a month
- $703.45
- Sales can fall by
- 36.3%
- To also pay yourself
- 114 sales
- To break even on 80 sales, charge at least $30.75.
- Your $351.40 of start-up costs come back in 1 month of profit.
If you change the price
| Price | Each sale leaves | Break-even |
|---|---|---|
| $32.00 -20% | $16.13 | 75 sales |
| $36.00 -10% | $19.94 | 60 sales |
| $40.00 now | $23.74 | 51 sales |
| $44.00 +10% | $27.54 | 44 sales |
| $48.00 +20% | $31.35 | 39 sales |
How break-even is worked out
Four lines of arithmetic. The calculator does each of them.
Contribution per sale = price − fee − refunds − what one costs. What one sale leaves to pay the bills. The fee is the processor's or the marketplace's, taken from the price.
Break-even sales = fixed costs ÷ contribution per sale. Rounded up, because half a sale doesn't pay anything. $1,000 of fixed costs at $30 a sale is 34 sales, not 33.3.
Break-even revenue = break-even sales × price. The sales figure your payout reports will show on the month you stop losing money.
Margin of safety = (expected − break-even) ÷ expected. How far sales can fall before you make a loss. 25% means a quarter of your sales can disappear and you still cover costs.
What a US company adds to your costs
Our prices and the state's, the same as at checkout.
| State | Forming it, once | Keeping it, a year | A month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wyoming | $351.40: Launch $249 + state $102.40 | $309: renewal $249 + state $60 | $25.75 |
| Delaware | $359: Launch $249 + state $110 | $649: renewal $249 + state $400 | $54.08 |
The renewal keeps your registered agent. Federal returns, a bank account and any sales tax registration aren't in these figures. The LLC cost calculator lists the whole year.
Questions about breaking even.
If yours is not here, email us at hello@baseacross.com before you order.
Divide your fixed costs a month by what each sale leaves after its own costs: the product, the postage, the payment or marketplace fee and refunds. Round up. That's the number of sales a month that covers everything.
Anything you pay every month whatever you sell: your platform plan, apps, ads you've committed to, bookkeeping, and the cost of keeping your company. Paying yourself is separate; the calculator shows the sales needed for that too.
Anything you pay for each sale: making or buying the product, packing, postage, and the payment fee. Stripe, PayPal, Etsy and Amazon each take theirs per sale, so they belong here, not in fixed costs.
They come off every sale. On a $40.00 product, Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 is $1.46. On Amazon, the 15% referral fee is $6.00 before any FBA fee.
From the second year, with us in Wyoming, $25.75 a month: the Launch plan renewal and the state's annual fee. Delaware costs more each year. The first year comes with forming it, a one-time $351.40 in Wyoming.
Raise the price, cut what each sale costs, or cut fixed costs. Price usually moves it most. In the example on this page, 10% more on the price takes break-even from 51 sales to 44.
Then no number of sales breaks even: more sales mean a bigger loss. The calculator says so. Fix the price or the cost per sale before spending on ads.
Know your numbers? Start the company.
Form the US LLC that can apply for Stripe and a US bank account. You see the whole order, state fee included, before anything is charged.
You're startingLLC · WY
Start a companyLaunch · $249 + $102.40 Wyoming · Same day