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Measure Guide

Reports and analytics to understand your business performance

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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

See the Etsy integration guide

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)

Read the Pricing Advisor guide

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