Whats the Difference Between Gross Sales vs Net Sales?

To calculate your net sales figure or net income, you have to know all the sales deductions that you need to make along with your total calculated gross sales. Sales metrics are measurements used by businesses to evaluate and track sales performance. Gross sales and net sales are two important sales metrics that can help businesses assess sales performance and make informed decisions.

Net sales are a better measure of how much a business is making through sales. A company may elect to present its gross sales, deductions, and net sales information on separate lines within its income statement. Sales revenue is one of the most important metrics your company can track and learn from. It’s the difference between seeing the big picture and diving into the nitty-gritty details of your business’s financial health.

What are net sales?

When making their final revenue statement, a business usually mentions the gross sales at the top. The process usually starts with the company heads declaring their gross profit in that financial year/quarter. The gross profit is often also referred to as total gross profit or total gross revenue. If you base your decisions solely on your company’s gross sales, you may have problems overstocking your products, which can later compromise other crucial expenses within your operations.

• If you’re in sales, you know that’s not revenue that adds money to your paycheck.
• This guide will explain everything you need to know about the difference between gross sales and net sales and offer resources on the best tracking tools available online.
• If the discrepancy between the two figures is substantial or consistently growing, there may be issues or deficiencies with the product, making for considerable amounts of returns or allowances.
• In that case, the customer needs to pay $4,900, getting a $100 discount for early payment.
• With this data, you can make informed decisions about what you need to do to increase sales to hit predetermined targets.

Your company’s income statement is broken out into three parts that support the analysis of capital costs, direct cost, and indirect cost. The direct costs portion of the income statement is where the net sales can be found. Gross sales are the total that you made from sales without taking other factors into consideration. Therefore, your net sales take into account returns, discounts, and allowances. Your net sales, then, are much closer to the actual amount of money you made.

Mosaic’s Metrics Builder Can Provide The Real-Time Data You Need

On the other hand, your net sales figure provides more in-depth data points with which you can identify potential problems. Because net sales accounts for allowances, gross sales vs net sales discounts, and sales returns, you can also get some idea about company profits. Most companies don’t provide gross sales in their publicly filed financial statements.

At the end of the year, that team’s sales are going to be reported on the company’s income statement. Well, two of the most prominent ones are going to be gross sales and net sales. Gross sales provide you with data regarding how much your sales team has been able to generate.

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It only uncovers the superficial layer of a business’s financial health. Gross sales measures a company’s total sales without adjusting for the expenses of generating those sales. The gross sales formula is calculated by totaling all sale invoices or related revenue transactions. However, gross sales do not include operating expenses, tax expenses, or other charges, which are all deducted to calculate net sales. A sales return occurs when a buyer sends a product back to a seller for a partial or full refund.

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Why is it Important to Understand Both Gross and Net Sales?

With over 50 charts, including financial data-based ones like the Multi-Axis Line Chart, it’s a game-changer. In this section, we’ll use ChartExpo, and sample data to demonstrate how you can use Multi Axis Line Chart to visualize your financial data for insights. This chart lets you dive deep into your financial data for hidden insights. While tools like Excel help organize data, they lack financial data-specific charts, like the Multi-Axis Line Chart. Net Sales provide a solid basis for assessing your business’s capacity to fund these activities and generate a return on investment.