How to Calculate Your Real Profit on Meesho

What real profit means on Meesho

Real profit is the money left after every cost of an order is paid, counted over all your orders and not only the ones that went well. It starts from what Meesho pays you, not from the price the customer sees.

Many sellers work out profit as price minus product cost on one delivered order. That figure is too high, because it ignores the orders that came back, the packaging and the ads.

What to subtract from the Meesho payment

Start with the settlement amount in your payment file and subtract five kinds of cost.

How to calculate Meesho profit step by step

Calculating profit by hand takes six steps for a chosen period, such as one month.

1. Download the order report and the payment files for the period from the Meesho Supplier Panel.
2. Add up the settlement amounts for the delivered orders. This is your income.
3. Multiply the units sold of each SKU by its product cost, and add the results.
4. Count every order you shipped, including RTO and returned orders, and multiply by your packaging cost per order.
5. Add up the return charges, RTO charges and ads cost deducted in the payment files.
6. Subtract steps 3, 4 and 5 from step 2. What is left is your profit before overheads.

Why profit on one order is misleading

Profit on one order is misleading because delivered orders also have to carry the cost of the orders that came back. An RTO or returned order brings no payment, yet you paid for its packaging, and a customer return can bring a return charge and a damaged product.

So two SKUs with the same margin per order can give very different profit if one of them returns much more often. This is why profit should be read SKU by SKU, together with the return and RTO rate. Our guide on what RTO is in Meesho and how to reduce it explains that side.

How to calculate Meesho profit with the dashboard

The free Meesho seller dashboard works profit out from the reports you upload, so you do not add columns by hand. You upload the order report, the payment files and the returns files, and enter the making cost of each SKU once.

Profit & loss then shows an estimate of net profit after your product cost, packaging, return charges and ads cost, and SKU performance lets you compare the SKUs you choose side by side. It is an estimate, not final accounts: rent, salaries and other overheads are not included, and recent orders can still change. The dashboard does not connect to Meesho and never asks for your Meesho password.

Costs sellers often leave out

The costs most often left out are the small ones that repeat on every order.

• Packaging for orders that came back. The bag and label were used even though nothing was paid.
• Ads cost, when it is deducted from the payment and not paid separately.
• Products that come back damaged or used and cannot be sold again.
• Labels, tape and printer supplies. Printing one cropped 4x6 label per order with the Meesho label crop tool uses less paper than a full A4 sheet per order.
• GST and any tax the marketplace deducts or collects, which your accountant should treat properly.
• Rent, salaries, electricity and your own time.

Checklist for a correct Meesho profit figure

Your profit figure can be trusted when these five things are true.

• It starts from the settlement amount, not the listing price.
• It covers a full period, with delivered, returned and RTO orders together.
• Every SKU has its own product cost.
• Return, RTO and ads deductions are taken from the payment files, not guessed.
• You know which orders are not paid yet. See the Meesho payment cycle and settlement for how to read that.

Frequently asked questions