Business and period
Used on screen and on the printed sheet only.
Every figure below must cover the same stretch of time. A month of sales against a year of rent produces a margin that means nothing.
Sales
What the business billed, and what came off it.
Everything invoiced or taken in, before deductions.
Comes off sales. Every margin below is worked against what is left.
Direct costs
The costs that only happen because you made a sale.
What the goods or the service itself cost you.
Getting it to the customer: delivery, packaging, fuel on deliveries.
Sales commission, mobile money and card charges, marketplace cuts.
Operating costs
What the business pays whether it sells anything or not.
Including your own, if you take one.
Power, water, internet, airtime.
Running the business, not delivering to customers.
Licences, insurance, security, professional fees, repairs.
Loan repayments and tax are deliberately not here. Operating margin is what the trading itself produces, before financing and before the revenue authority, so that a change in either does not disguise a change in the business.
Your target
Optional. The operating margin you want the business to reach.
The margin works without it. Add a target and the result also shows what it would take to get there, three different ways.
Operating margin
Enter your figures for the period
Sales and at least one cost are both needed before a margin can be worked out.
What you will get
Fill in the sales and the costs, and the answer appears here as you type.
- Gross, contribution and operating margin, from one set of figures
- What is left out of every hundred you sell, at each step
- Where the margin goes, direct cost against running cost
- Your largest running costs, ranked and weighed against sales
- Set a target margin and see three separate ways to reach it
Doing this by hand every month?
You have just rebuilt your trading position from scratch, for one period.
OraOS Business keeps this calculation running. It connects sales, purchases, stock, expenses and cash, so margin moves when the business moves, rather than being reassembled out of a bank statement and a wage book every month.
- Sales and direct costs from the transactions themselves
- Operating costs from the expenses as they are recorded
- Margin by period, so you can see which way it is going
- Cash and financing readiness beside the trading position
A separate product, with its own pricing and its own pilot. This calculator stays free either way.
Ora Account
Coming soonSave periods, compare results and reopen your work across Ora Tools when the Ora Account launches. It will be free.
Nothing on this page asks you to sign in, and nothing you enter leaves your browser today.
What the account will doOra Tools Pro
Coming soonSaved periods, margin history month by month, comparison between periods, scenario planning and export to PDF and spreadsheet are intended for Pro.
None of it exists yet, and no price has been set. The calculation on this page is complete and free, and will stay that way.
Free and Pro, comparedYour calculation runs in your browser. The figures you enter, including salaries and rent, are never sent to Ora, and are kept only in this browser so that a refresh does not lose them. Clearing the form removes them. Like any website, Ora Tools counts anonymous page views, which carry nothing you typed.