Net profit & hidden cost

Estimated Net Profit and Hidden Cost are the two-number summary of a product's financial breakdown, shown right on the card so you see the real result of a sale before opening the full P&L.

Estimated Net Profit, % margin, and Hidden Cost on the product detail card.

Estimated Net Profit

What actually lands in your pocket on one sale — every line item in the breakdown, signed and summed:

Estimated Net Profit =
    original price
  − seller discounts, vouchers & coin cashback
  − platform fees (commission, service, transaction, order-processing, …)
  − VAT, net of input-VAT credit (VAT-registered shops)
  − COGS
  − allocated ad spend per sale (Shopee, TikTok)
  − return & damage + reverse-shipping cost
  − affiliate commission & campaign fees

Buyer-paid shipping and the courier cost travel as a pass-through pair and net to about zero.

The % margin beneath it is that profit divided by the discounted price (original price minus seller discount — vouchers and cashback reduce profit but not the denominator).

Hidden Cost

The margin leakage the buyer never sees on the price tag. It sums the breakdown lines tagged hidden:

• Seller-funded discounts, vouchers, and coin/LazCoins cashback
• Secondary platform fees — Shopee: service, transaction, order-processing, and campaign fees; Lazada: payment, free-shipping commission, LazCoins participation/redemption, and premium-package fees; TikTok: transaction, pre-order, commerce-growth, infrastructure, and co-funding (BCD/FS) fees
• Allocated ad spend per sale
• Return & damage and reverse-shipping costs

Not part of Hidden Cost — these show as their own explicit lines instead: the main platform commission, COGS, VAT and input-VAT credit, affiliate commission, and buyer-paid shipping.

Breakdown line items — the secondary fees and misc costs here sum to the card's Hidden Cost.

Why it matters

• A healthy-looking sale price can still hide a thin margin once fees and ad spend come out. Hidden Cost makes that slice visible at a glance.
• Estimated Net Profit is the number every ranking and Action is built on, so a wrong COGS shows up here first.