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Black Friday Profit Calculator

Work out what one Black Friday or Cyber Monday order leaves after the discount, higher ad costs, returns, payment fees and shipping, the deepest discount you can afford and how many orders the sale needs to pay.

What is a Black Friday profit calculator?

A Black Friday profit calculator works out what an order leaves after the sale discount, the ad cost of winning it, payment fees, shipping and expected returns. It also finds the deepest discount that still breaks even, so you can set an offer before the weekend instead of finding out from the P&L afterwards.

Optional

Start from your store

Enter your Shopify or WooCommerce store's address and we'll read the prices it shows publicly. Product costs, ad spend and returns are never public, so those stay yours to fill in.

Your Black Friday order

Enter one order as it looks today, then your Black Friday offer. Only the price, the product cost and the discount are required; anything left empty counts as zero.

The order

The price and the costs every order carries.

The full price before the discount. For a store-wide sale, use your average order value.
What the items in that order cost you to buy or make.
What you pay per order for postage, packing and pick fees.

Fees and returns

What your payment provider keeps and what returns cost you.

The percentage your payment provider takes from each order.
Any fixed fee per transaction on top of the percentage.
Share of orders refunded. Returned items are assumed to go back into stock; the shipping, fees and ad cost are not recovered.
Return label and handling, plus any write-off for items you cannot resell.

Ad costs

What it costs in ads to win one order, now and over Black Friday.

What you spend on ads for each order on a normal day. Leave it empty for orders with no ad cost.
How much more each order costs in ads during the sale. Use a minus sign if you expect it to cost less.

Your Black Friday offer

The discount, and optionally the orders you expect, to compare the sale with a normal period.

The percentage off the regular price.
Orders over the same number of days without a sale, to compare against.
Your own estimate for the sale period.

The formulas

How Black Friday profit per order is calculated

Profit per order = Sale price x (1 - Return rate - Payment fee rate) - Product cost x (1 - Return rate) - Shipping - Fixed payment fee - Return rate x Cost per return - Ad cost

Everything before the ad cost is what an order leaves before ads, which is also the most it can spend on ads without losing money.

Sale price
Regular price x (1 - Discount).
Black Friday ad cost
Normal ad cost per order x (1 + Ad cost change).
Costs per order
Product cost x (1 - Return rate) + Shipping + Fixed payment fee + Return rate x Cost per return: the costs that do not fall with the price.
Max discount
1 - (Costs per order + Ad cost) / (Regular price x (1 - Return rate - Payment fee rate)).
Break-even ROAS
Sale price / What the order leaves before ads.
Sale orders per normal order
Profit of a normal order at full price / Profit of a Black Friday order.
  • Returned items are assumed to go back into stock, so their product cost is recovered. Their shipping, payment fees and ad cost are not.
  • The maximum discount is rounded down and the break-even ROAS up, so neither figure on screen is more generous than the real one.
  • At exactly the maximum discount an order leaves nothing towards fixed costs, so set your offer below it.

Worked examples

One Black Friday order, worked through three ways

All three use the same order: a regular price of 80.00, a product cost of 24.00, shipping of 8.00, payment fees of 3% plus 0.30, a 10% return rate and 5.00 per return, with a normal ad cost of 15.00 per order that rises by 20% over Black Friday.

Example 1

What one order leaves at 20% off

The store plans a 20% sitewide discount for Black Friday.

Inputs

Regular price
80.00
Discount
20%
Black Friday ad cost
15.00 + 20% = 18.00

Working

  1. Sale price: 80.00 x (1 - 20%) = 64.00
  2. Refunds: 64.00 x 10% = 6.40
  3. Product cost after restocked returns: 24.00 x (1 - 10%) = 21.60
  4. Payment fees: 64.00 x 3% + 0.30 = 2.22
  5. Return costs: 10% x 5.00 = 0.50
  6. Left before ads: 64.00 - 6.40 - 21.60 - 8.00 - 2.22 - 0.50 = 25.28
  7. Profit per order: 25.28 - 18.00 = 7.28

Profit per order

7.28

At full price with the normal ad cost the same order leaves 24.20. The discount and the higher ad cost together take about 70% of that away.

Example 2

The deepest discount that still breaks even

How far can the store go before an order loses money at the Black Friday ad cost?

Inputs

Regular price
80.00
Black Friday ad cost
18.00
Return rate and payment fee rate
10% and 3%

Working

  1. Costs per order: 21.60 + 8.00 + 0.30 + 0.50 = 30.40
  2. Share of the sale price kept: 1 - 10% - 3% = 87%
  3. Max discount: 1 - (30.40 + 18.00) / (80.00 x 87%) = 1 - 48.40 / 69.60 = 30.46%, shown rounded down as 30.4%
  4. With no ad cost: 1 - 30.40 / 69.60 = 56.3%
  5. Break-even ROAS at 20% off: 64.00 / 25.28 = 2.5316, shown rounded up as 2.54x

Max discount

30.4%

A 30% offer would leave 0.32 per order, which covers almost nothing else. Orders from the email list, with no ad cost, could carry a deeper discount.

Example 3

Will the sale beat a normal weekend?

The store usually takes 300 orders from Friday to Monday and expects 750 at 20% off.

Inputs

Orders in a normal weekend
300
Orders expected in the sale
750
Profit per sale order
7.28

Working

  1. Normal order: 39.20 before ads - 15.00 ad cost = 24.20
  2. Normal weekend: 300 x 24.20 = 7,260.00
  3. Sale weekend: 750 x 7.28 = 5,460.00
  4. Difference: 5,460.00 - 7,260.00 = -1,800.00
  5. Orders to match: 300 x 24.20 / 7.28 = 997.3, so 998 orders

Against a normal weekend

1,800.00 less

Two and a half times the orders still leaves less profit than a normal weekend. The sale needs 998 orders, or a shallower discount, to come out ahead.

Black Friday maths

Where a Black Friday order's margin goes

Five things that shrink a Black Friday order

The discount is the cost you choose. The others come with it, and some of them grow during the sale.

The discount

Every percent off comes straight out of what the order leaves, while the product cost stays the same. A 20% discount on a product with a 30% gross margin takes away two thirds of its gross profit.

Higher ad costs

Many brands bid for the same shoppers in the same few days, so ad auctions can get more expensive. When each order costs more to win and leaves less, the margin is squeezed from both sides.

Returns

Gift buying and impulse orders can come back after the sale. A refund hands back the sale price, but the shipping, the payment fee and the ad cost of that order are already spent.

Payment fees

A percentage fee falls with the price, but a fixed fee per order does not, so it takes a bigger share of a cheaper order. Many providers also keep their fee when you refund an order.

Shipping and fulfillment

Postage, packing and pick fees are charged per order whatever the price. A free shipping offer moves that cost from the customer to you.

How the maximum discount is worked out

Take what an order leaves at full price, subtract the ad cost of winning it, and see how much of the price is left to give away. The calculator solves for the discount at which profit per order reaches zero: 1 - (Costs per order + Ad cost) / (Price x (1 - Return rate - Payment fee rate)). Stacking a sitewide sale with a code? Work out the combined discount with the double discount calculator and enter that.

Ad costs during the sale

Your break-even ROAS rises as the discount gets deeper, because each order leaves less to pay for ads. A campaign that broke even at 2x in October can need well over that at 30% off. Check the threshold with the break-even ROAS calculator, and what you actually pay per order with the CPA calculator.

How many more orders a discount needs

A discounted order leaves less, so the sale has to bring in more orders just to stand still. Divide what a normal order leaves by what a Black Friday order leaves: that is how many sale orders it takes to match one normal order. For the same question on a single product without ads and returns, use the discount impact calculator.

A short plan for the weeks before Black Friday

Work through these before you set the offer, while there is still time to change it.

  1. 1.Know your margin per product

    Discount depth should follow margin. A product with a thin margin may not survive a sitewide percentage that a high-margin product carries easily.

  2. 2.Set a maximum discount and an ad cost cap

    Use the numbers above to decide the deepest discount you will run and the most you will pay in ads per order, and set those limits before the sale starts.

  3. 3.Treat paid and unpaid orders differently

    Orders from your email and SMS list carry no ad cost, so they can take a deeper discount than orders won through ads. Early access for subscribers is one way to use that.

  4. 4.Protect order value

    A threshold offer, such as a gift or free shipping over a set spend, raises the order value that fixed costs are spread over, instead of only cutting the price.

  5. 5.Plan for returns

    Set your return window and process before the sale, and budget for the refunds that arrive in the weeks after it.

  6. 6.Track profit every day, not only revenue

    Revenue will look strong over the weekend. Check what orders leave after ad spend each day, so you can pull back spend or a discount that is losing money while the sale is still running.

What this calculator leaves out

It works on one order at a time and includes only the costs that come with each order. Staff, rent, software and other fixed costs are left out, so a positive result is a contribution towards them, not net profit. It counts the first order only and does not model customers who come back later. Each line is an average, and your real orders will vary. For a fuller per-unit breakdown, use the contribution margin calculator.

In MerchantFlow

See what the sale actually left, day by day

MerchantFlow brings in your Shopify or WooCommerce orders and refunds and your ad spend from Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and Snapchat, then takes COGS, payment fees and shipping off each order. Over the sale you see each day's profit after ad spend, not only its revenue.

See the real-time P&L

Common Questions

Black Friday profit questions

How do I calculate Black Friday profit per order?

Start with the price after your discount, then take off refunds on returns, product cost, shipping, payment fees, return costs and the ad cost of winning the order. For an 80.00 order at 20% off with the costs in the first worked example and an ad cost of 18.00, that leaves 7.28 per order.

What is the maximum discount I can offer on Black Friday?

It is the discount at which an order stops making money after ads. For the order in the worked examples with an 18.00 ad cost, it is 30.4%. Orders with no ad cost, such as sales to your email list, can go further: up to 56.3% for the same order.

Why does my break-even ROAS go up during Black Friday?

Break-even ROAS is the sale price divided by what the order leaves before ads. A discount cuts what the order leaves faster than it cuts the price, because product cost, shipping and fixed fees do not fall with it. In the worked examples it rises from 2.05x at full price to 2.54x at 20% off.

How many more orders does a Black Friday sale need?

Divide what a normal order leaves by what a sale order leaves. If a normal order leaves 24.20 and a Black Friday order leaves 7.28, you need about 3.3 sale orders for every normal one just to earn the same.

Should I offer free shipping on Black Friday?

Free shipping moves the shipping cost onto you, so add it to the shipping and fulfillment field and see what the order leaves. Setting the free shipping threshold above your usual order value can raise order value at the same time.

How do returns affect Black Friday profit?

A returned order refunds the sale price, but its shipping, payment fee and ad cost are already spent. The calculator assumes returned items go back into stock. If some cannot be resold, add that write-off to the cost per return.

Is a percentage discount or a fixed amount off better for Black Friday?

A fixed amount off a minimum spend protects margin on larger orders and nudges order value up, while a percentage is simpler to explain. To compare them here, enter the fixed amount as a percentage of the order value it applies to.

When should I plan my Black Friday offer?

Early enough to change it. Work out the maximum discount and the ad cost you can afford per order before you build creative and set budgets, then check daily profit while the sale runs.

More Tools

Related Calculators

Double Discount Calculator

The final price and real combined discount when two discounts stack

Triple Discount Calculator

Three stacked discounts, and the list price that keeps your margin

Break-Even ROAS Calculator

The ROAS your ads need before they make a profit

Discount Impact Calculator

How many more units a discount needs to sell to keep your profit

CPA Calculator

What each order costs in ads, and the most it can cost

Free Shipping Threshold Calculator

The order value where free shipping pays for itself