Measure Guide
Reports and analytics to understand your business performance
How to read your numbers in Ardent Seller
Reports answer the common questions: "What did I sell?" (Income Statement, P&L), "What's on hand and at what cost?" (Inventory Valuation, Stocktake), "What can I write off?" (Schedule C, Donations, Depreciation), "What changed and when?" (Audit Trail, Traceability), and "What needs attention?" (Pricing Health, Dead Inventory). All reports live under Reports in the sidebar, grouped by the question they answer, exactly as below. The hub leads with your Pinned and Recently viewed reports (star any report to pin it to the sidebar), and shows a curated Start here list until you open your first report. Reports that need data you haven't added yet (for example, a marketplace connection or equipment items) appear dimmed with a note about what to add — they stay clickable. Every report also carries a collapsible Understanding this report panel under its title explaining what the report shows, why it matters, and how to act on the numbers. Most reports include location filters and export to CSV; many also print or download as PDF.
Common Report Filters
Most reports share a common filter bar at the top:
- Date Range — period reports offer presets (Today, Yesterday, This Month, Last Month, This Quarter, Last Quarter, This Year, Last Year) or a custom start and end date. Today and Yesterday are single-day views — useful for reading a market day or a launch day the moment it ends, without building a custom range
- Location — a multi-select location filter to view one location, several, or all of them
- Marketplace Channel — on the financial statements, when a marketplace is connected: all channels, direct sales only, all marketplaces, or a single shop
- Actions menu — export the report as CSV; most reports also offer Download PDF and Print
Which Date a Report Counts
Every transaction has two dates — the day it was initiated (the order was placed, the bill arrived) and the day it was completed (the money moved). Which one a report counts is decided by the Accounting Method in Settings → Account Preferences:
- Cash (the default) — transactions count on their completion date
- Accrual — transactions count on their initiation date
A completed transaction does not always carry a completion date — imported records often do not include one, and Ardent Seller will not invent a date you never supplied. Those transactions count on their initiation date instead, so they still appear in your figures rather than dropping out of every period.
Every financial report and dashboard widget follows that one setting, so the Income Statement, Profit & Loss, Profit Waterfall, Sales & Expenditure, Schedule C, Today’s Pulse and the dashboard widgets all agree on what a period contains. Most of the time the two dates are the same and the choice makes no difference — it only shows up for a transaction started in one period and completed in another, which is exactly when a day-level or month-end figure can move.
One report is deliberately different: the Cash Flow Summary widget always reports when money actually moved, whatever your accounting method. On an accrual account it will therefore not match the Income Statement — that is the normal difference between a cash-flow view and an income statement, not an error.
Am I making money?
Income Statement
Profit & Loss report for the selected period.
Revenue section: sales revenue, other income, and surcharges, less discounts = net revenue
Cost of goods sold and gross profit
Expense lines: operating expenses, marketplace fees and advertising, shipping, transaction fees, waste, losses, and donations
Net profit, plus tax collected — marketplace-collected tax is shown separately since it is not your liability
Filter by direct sales vs marketplace channels when a marketplace is connected
Profit & Loss
Income and expenditure report for the selected period.
Classic running-statement layout: Revenue, Cost of Goods Sold, Gross Profit, Expenses, and Net Profit or Loss
Same underlying figures as the Income Statement, formatted as a traditional P&L statement
Tax collected is listed as a liability, separate from revenue
Export CSV or PDF, or print
Sales & Expenditure
Sales revenue and expense report for the selected period.
Sales section: sales revenue and surcharges, less discounts = net sales
Expenses section: every expense line with total expenses
A quick health check when you don’t need the full income statement
Profit Waterfall
Revenue to net profit as one picture — where discounts, COGS, fees, and expenses take their cut.
Waterfall chart: revenue at the left, each cost step subtracted in turn, net profit at the right
Steps: sales revenue, discounts, cost of goods sold, marketplace fees and advertising, operating expenses, and other costs
Uses the same numbers as the Income Statement for the same period, so the two always agree
Each step links to the report with the underlying detail (Income Statement, Marketplace Statement, Sales & Expenditure)
Table fallback lists every step with running total; export CSV or PDF
Where the Money Goes
Money flow from vendors through materials and production to sales channels, with waste and loss branches.
Sankey diagram: vendors → material categories → products → sales channels, with flow width showing dollars
Waste and loss branch shows cost leaking out of materials
Hover a flow for the dollar amount and the number of transactions behind it
Columns measure different events (purchases, production use, sales) over the period, so they intentionally don’t balance — materials bought this period may not be used yet, and revenue above material cost is your margin
Table fallback lists every flow; export CSV or PDF
Break-even & Contribution Margin
How many sales until you break even each month — fixed vs. variable costs and per-product contribution.
Splits expenses into fixed (rent, insurance, utilities, and similar) and variable (supplies, fees, and everything sold) using your expense tax categories — adjust the split once and the report remembers it on this device
Monthly break-even day: the day your cumulative contribution covered that month’s fixed costs ("you crossed break-even on the 19th")
Blended contribution margin and the revenue needed to break even
Per-product contribution table: price, unit cost, margin, and how many units would cover your monthly fixed costs
Uncategorized expenses count as variable — categorize expenses in Settings for a sharper split
Export CSV or PDF
True Hourly Wage
What your craft actually pays you per hour — overall and per product, against a target wage you set.
Effective hourly wage = contribution after materials and non-labor costs ÷ the labor hours embedded in the units you actually sold
Labor hours come from your recipes’ step durations, so products without a recipe (or without timed steps) are honestly listed as "labor unknown" instead of being guessed
Set a target wage and see which products clear it, which quietly pay less, and the price each would need to hit your target
Monthly trend shows whether your effective wage is improving
Pairs with Break-even (am I losing money?) — this answers "am I working for free?"
Export CSV or PDF
Sales & customers
Customer Sales
Per-customer revenue, orders, and average order value for the selected period.
Summary cards: customer count, total revenue, and total orders for the period
Per-customer rows: revenue, orders, average order value, groups, and repeat-buyer status
Filter by customer group, or summarize the table by group for per-group subtotals
Customers & Revenue by Source
Customers acquired and revenue earned grouped by referral source for the selected period.
One row per referral source: customers, revenue, average order value, and orders
Shows which channels (markets, social, word of mouth, and so on) actually pay off
Referral sources are defined in Settings and set on each customer record
Customer Retention & Cohorts
Do your customers come back? Cohort retention grid, repeat-purchase rate, and regulars who went quiet.
Cohort grid: customers grouped by the month of their first purchase, with each following month showing the percent who purchased again
Headline metrics: repeat-purchase rate, one-and-done percent, and median days between orders
Repeat-rate trend shows new vs. returning buyers month by month
The went-quiet list surfaces repeat customers whose gap since their last order far exceeds their usual cadence — ready for a nudge
Filter by customer group; sales without a customer record are not included
Export CSV or PDF
Sales Seasonality
Calendar heatmap of daily sales for a year — spot weekday rhythm, holiday ramps, and dead weeks.
Year-at-a-glance calendar: each day is shaded by revenue or order count — darker means more sales
Summary cards: total revenue, orders, active days, best day, and best weekday
Month and weekday totals show which months and market days carry the business
Filter by location and sales channel (all, marketplace, or direct); switch the calendar between revenue and orders
Click a day with sales to see that day’s transactions and jump straight to any of them
Export CSV (daily totals) or PDF (monthly totals plus daily detail)
Market & Event Performance
Per-event P&L for craft fairs and markets — revenue, booth costs, and best-sellers for every selling day.
Treats each day you sell at a Sales-type location as an event: one row per market day with revenue, orders, units, cost of goods, same-day expenses, and net profit
Best-seller column shows the top item at each event
Location comparison totals answer "which markets make me money?" — events, revenue, expenses, net, and average revenue per event
To include booth fees and travel, record them as expenses at the event’s Sales location dated on the event day
Create a location of type Sales for each recurring market or venue (Entities → Locations), and select it when recording sales at the event
Event tags: tag an event’s sales and expenses with a transaction tag (e.g. “Spring Makers Market 2026”) and pick it under Event tags in the report — each selected tag becomes one event row, covering multi-day events and expenses paid ahead of the event day, at any location
Export CSV or PDF for booking decisions
Channel Profitability
Side-by-side P&L per sales channel — marketplace, direct, and in-person — with fees, COGS, and real margin.
Three channels: marketplace (synced sales), in-person (sales recorded at Sales-type locations), and direct (everything else)
Per-channel: revenue, orders, average order value, cost of goods sold, fees, net profit, and margin percent
Marketplace fees include synced marketplace charges and advertising plus payment fees on the sales; direct and in-person channels count their payment and transaction fees
Monthly revenue trend chart shows how the channel mix is shifting
Answers "is the marketplace still worth it after fees?" with your own numbers — export CSV or PDF
Marketplace Statement
Marketplace activity summary across connected channels.
Sales and fees summary for the selected channel and period
Seller services section breaks out listing, advertising, and similar marketplace charges
Sales detail table: date, order, items, gross amount, fees, tax, and net
Requires a connected marketplace such as Etsy
Discount Effectiveness
Do discounts grow baskets and bring buyers back, or just give away margin? Discounted vs. full-price sales compared.
Side-by-side cohorts: share of revenue sold at a discount, average discount depth, average order value, and margin for discounted vs. full-price sales
Customer lens: repeat-purchase rate of customers acquired with a discount vs. at full price
Per-pricing-tier performance shows how wholesale and other tiers really perform
Marketplace coupon table appears when synced orders carry coupon codes
Monthly trend of discounted share of revenue
Export CSV or PDF
Your Year in Making
Your maker year in review — pieces made, materials used, top product, busiest week — with a shareable recap card.
Annual recap of the year’s making: pieces produced, materials consumed in physical terms, hours of making, top product, best market or event, busiest week, and repeat customers
Dollar amounts stay hidden until you choose to show them
Create an Instagram-ready share card — a celebratory image of your year with no dollar amounts unless you turned them on
Mid-year it works as a "year so far" view; the picture completes in December
Export CSV or PDF of the stats as well
Pricing & products
Pricing Health
Every sellable item’s margin against your target — below-cost flags, cost sources, and what-if pricing.
Summary band: items analyzed, below cost, below target, missing cost data, missing price, and average margin
One row per sellable item: price, unit cost, margin, gap to your target margin, and 90-day sales
Set your target margin and cost assumptions in the report settings
Optional AI Pricing Advisor panel suggests specific price changes (enable the AI pricing advisor in Account Preferences)
Price List
View active products and services with pricing.
Columns: location, name, SKU, category, unit, and price
Sortable table with pagination and a location filter
Export as CSV or PDF, or print — handy for wholesale sheets and price tags
Margin vs. Volume
Every sellable item plotted by units sold and margin — know your stars from your sleepers.
Scatter chart: units sold across, margin percent up, point size showing revenue over the trailing window
Median lines split the chart into four quadrants: Stars (high margin, high volume), Workhorses (low margin, high volume), Sleepers (high margin, low volume), and Question Marks (low margin, low volume)
Trailing window picker: 30, 90, 180, or 365 days
Quadrant table beneath lists each item with a suggested next step, linking to Pricing Health and Dead Inventory
Export CSV or PDF including quadrant membership
Product Portfolio
Treemap of your catalog — tile size shows revenue, color shows margin, so concentration and thin margins jump out.
Category → product treemap: tile size is revenue over the trailing window (switchable to units sold)
Tile color is margin percent on a diverging scale — below-cost items show red
Trailing window picker: 30, 90, 180, or 365 days
Click a category tile to drill into its products; click a product to open the item
Table fallback lists every product with revenue, units, and margin; export CSV or PDF
ABC Analysis
Pareto ranking of items by revenue, cost, or units with automatic A/B/C class bands.
Pareto chart: items ranked by the selected measure with a cumulative-percent line
Automatic class bands: A covers the first 80% of the total, B the next 15%, C the last 5%
Switch the measure between revenue, cost of goods sold, and units sold
Summary cards show item count and share per class
Table lists each item’s rank, value, share, cumulative share, and class — the class column is included in exports for purchasing and stocktake prioritization
Inventory & materials
Perform Stocktake
Use this report to perform a physical inventory count.
Enter physical counts next to each item’s system quantity — variances are calculated as you type
Summary shows how many items you’ve counted and how many have a variance
Creating the stocktake posts a stocktake transaction that adjusts inventory to your counts
Filter by location and category to count in smaller batches
Prefer step-by-step? The Guided Stocktake workflow (linked from the report) walks through the same count
Inventory Valuation
On-hand inventory value at the beginning and end of the selected period.
Each item shows beginning and ending quantity and value, plus the change over the period
Grouped by inventory category with per-category subtotals
Overall totals: beginning value, ending value, and change — useful for balance sheet and cost of goods sold work
Filter by location for multi-location businesses
Inventory Turnover & Stock Aging
How fast stock moves and how long it has sat — turns per item plus the cash tied up in each aging bucket.
Per-item turnover: cost of goods sold for the period against current stock value, with annualized turns and days on hand
Aging buckets (0–30, 31–90, 91–180, 180+ days since last movement) show the dollars sitting in each — the drift toward dead stock before it qualifies as dead
Monthly turns trend shows whether inventory efficiency is improving
Items that have never moved are aged from when they were first stocked
Sits between the live stock view and the Dead Inventory report — use it as the early warning
Export CSV or PDF for bookkeeper and lender conversations
Dead Inventory
Find products that aren’t selling, the cash tied up in them, and a suggested markdown to clear them.
Summary cards: total capital tied up, dead item count, and estimated recovery
Two modes: by last sale (finished products) or by last use (materials and ingredients)
Per-item detail: on hand, unit cost, capital tied up, last sold or used, and days idle
Suggested discount per item with estimated recovery — tune the idle threshold and markdown aggressiveness
Stockout & Lost Sales
Days each item sat at zero stock and the revenue those gaps likely cost you, ranked by cost of unavailability.
Reconstructs each product’s stock level day by day from your transaction history to find the days it sat at zero
Applies the item’s own sales velocity from in-stock days to estimate the revenue missed while it was out
Estimates are clearly labeled, and items with sparse sales history are flagged low-confidence rather than over-claimed
Per-item stockout windows show exactly when you were out
Measurement completes prevention — pair it with Smart Restock alerts to stop the next stockout
Export CSV or PDF
What Can I Make Right Now?
Maximum buildable units per recipe from current stock, the ingredient that runs out first, and what unlocks the next batch.
For every recipe: how many units you can build from what is on the shelf right now, in whole batches
Names the limiting ingredient ("you can pour 40 more candles; wicks run out first") and the cheapest purchase that unlocks the next batch
Ingredients made in-house show what their own recipe could add, one level deep
Ingredient detail per recipe: required per batch, on hand, and batches supported
Point-in-time — no date range; refresh after logging purchases or production
Export CSV or PDF for a night-before-market production plan
Season Readiness
Plan a selling season from last year’s sales — what to make, what to order, and when to order it.
Pick a target season window (Q4 holiday, spring, summer, or custom) and an optional growth percent
Projects demand per product from your sales in the same window last year, then nets out what you already have on hand
Explodes the plan through your recipes into a material shopping list — required quantity, on hand, on order, shortfall, and estimated cost
Order-by dates work back from the season start using each material’s vendor lead time
Products without a recipe are listed to order as-is; ingredients that are themselves made in-house are flagged
The projection is deterministic — last season × your growth number, not a forecast — and the comparison window is always shown
Export the shopping list as CSV, or the full plan as PDF
Vendor Spend & Price Inflation
Spend by vendor and unit-cost movement per material — see which prices rose and who raised them.
Per-vendor totals: spend, orders, distinct materials, and share of your purchasing
Per-material price picture across all vendors: first vs. latest unit cost in the period and the percent change — increases of 10% or more are flagged
Unit costs are normalized to a common base unit, so purchases in different package sizes and units compare directly
Vendor concentration per material shows where you depend on a single supplier
Monthly stacked chart shows how spend is distributed across your top vendors
Export CSV or PDF for renegotiation and repricing conversations
Production & equipment
Batch Yield & Efficiency
Planned vs. actual yield and real cost per unit for every production run — spot recipes whose cost has drifted.
One row per completed production run: planned vs. actual output, yield variance, material cost, equipment hours, and cost per unit
Yield variance chart shows over- and under-producing runs at a glance; cost-per-unit trend shows drift over time
Per-recipe summary compares each recipe’s latest cost per unit against its typical (median) cost — recipes that drift more than 10% are flagged for a recost
Material cost comes from what each run actually consumed, so the numbers reflect spillage, substitutions, and scaling
Export CSV or PDF for production records
Traceability
Trace ingredients from purchase through production to sale.
Forward traceability: what products were made from a specific batch of ingredient
Backward traceability: what ingredients went into a specific finished product
Shows the full chain: purchase → production → sale with batch numbers at each step
Columns: item name, batch/lot number, source, destination, date, quantity, unit
Essential for food safety recalls and supplier issue investigation
Waste & Shrinkage
What loss really costs — waste, damage, and count variance by reason and item, with a shrinkage-rate trend.
Totals every waste and loss transaction plus negative stocktake and adjustment corrections for the period
Loss split by reason: waste, loss/damage, count variance from stocktakes, and adjustments
Waste and loss lines are automatically valued at the item’s average cost when recorded (older entries recorded before this valuation keep $0 unless a line’s item, unit, or quantity is later changed)
Count corrections carry no cost of their own, so they are valued at the item’s weighted-average cost
Monthly chart stacks loss by reason with a shrinkage-rate line (loss as a percent of cost of goods sold)
Per-item table shows where the loss concentrates; the events table lists every loss transaction
Export CSV or PDF — useful for insurance and tax records
Equipment Usage
Track equipment usage hours, frequency, and patterns.
Summary cards: total equipment tracked, total usage hours, and most-used equipment
Per-equipment detail: times used, total hours, and average hours per use
Date range presets plus location filter for multi-location equipment
Footer row with totals for usage count and hours
Equipment ROI & Payback
Has your kiln paid for itself? Production value vs. purchase and upkeep cost, true cost per hour, and payback progress.
Per equipment item: acquisition cost plus lifetime maintenance against the production value attributed through its logged usage hours
Payback progress bar ("71% paid off") with a projected payback date at your recent production pace
True cost per usage hour — compare it against what your recipes assume the machine costs
Value attribution follows the equipment’s share of logged hours on each production run; runs whose product has no price are flagged rather than guessed
Idle-equipment flags and a maintenance-cost trend feed the replace-vs-repair conversation, linking Replacement Planning
Export CSV or PDF
Replacement Planning
Monitor equipment lifespan and plan for replacements.
Three status categories: In Good Condition (<25% used), Moderate Wear (25-75%), Needs Replacement (>75%)
Summary cards show count of equipment in each status category
Per-equipment detail: purchase date, expected life, total hours, lifespan percentage with progress bar
Color-coded status: green (continue use), amber (budget for replacement), red (plan replacement soon)
Based on 2,000 work hours per year assumption
Only includes equipment with "Useful Life" configured
Taxes, compliance & records
Schedule C
IRS Schedule C (Form 1040) — Profit or Loss From Business report for US taxpayers.
Part I - Income: gross receipts, returns, COGS, other income, gross income
Part II - Expenses: categorized by IRS tax categories with line number mapping
Part III - Cost of Goods Sold: beginning inventory, purchases, ending inventory
Tentative Profit and Net Profit/Loss calculations
Shows business information (NAICS code, description, accounting method)
Flags uncategorized expenses for review
Filing guidance: lists required forms (4562, 8829, SE, 8995)
Disclaimer: consult a tax professional for official filing
Donations
Donation summary for tax reporting and charitable contribution tracking.
Lists all donation transactions by date and charity recipient
Shows donation amounts and descriptions
Recorded value comes from the editable value on each donation line — prefilled at the item’s average cost, overridable with e.g. a fair-market value (donations recorded before this field keep $0)
Shows the item’s cost basis alongside the recorded value
Totals by charity for easy reporting
Export for tax records
Depreciation Schedule
Depreciation tracking and book values for equipment assets.
Shows each depreciable asset with purchase date, acquisition cost, and method
Calculated values: annual depreciation, accumulated depreciation, current book value
Remaining useful life and residual/salvage value
Filter by location; export CSV or PDF for tax preparation
Cottage Food Cap Tracker
Year-to-date gross sales against your state’s cottage food revenue cap, with pace projection and monthly headroom.
Pick your state once — the tracker charts cumulative gross sales against the state’s cottage food revenue cap
Pace projection: "at this pace you reach the cap in late October", plus headroom remaining and percent used
Two-tier states can enter a custom cap; food-freedom states with no cap still get the sales pacing view
State cap data links to official sources and shows when it was last reviewed
Informational only — not legal advice; verify how your state counts sales toward the cap
Export CSV or PDF as a record
Audit Trail
View all changes across your account.
Shows every create, update, duplicate, and delete action across your records
Columns include date/time, the user who made the change, the action, and old vs new values
Filter by record type (inventory, transactions, team members, and more), action type, and location
Export CSV or PDF, or print, for compliance documentation