Net Sales: What They Are and How to Calculate Them

Harold Averkamp (CPA, MBA) has worked as a university accounting instructor, accountant, and consultant for more than 25 years. He is the sole author of all the materials on AccountingCoach.com. Discover the benefits of customer segmentation and explore effective strategies to track your campaigns for better results.

There a number of transactions that can reduce the gross sales of a business, resulting in net sales. These transactions are most likely to arise for businesses that sell physical goods, and least likely for those that sell services. These transactions are clustered into the general categories of sales allowances, sales returns, and sales discounts, which are discussed below. The accounting for these transactions is to record them in a sales allowances, sales returns, or sales discounts account. For presentation purposes, they offset gross sales to arrive at net sales. The concept of net sales is a very important one as it is, if not the first line item, one of the first few the income statement that sets the tone of the statement.

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Gross profit is calculated using the net sales, and not the gross sales numbers. Net sales is important because it is more accurate in comparison to gross sales. It provides an insight into your business and how much you are earning. This gives you a glimpse of your business health as it highlights the costs that are incurred when making sales.

Net profit is another one of the most important retail metrics—at the end of the day, it’s the money that’s left in your pocket. That’s why it’s also known as the bottom line, as it’s usually shown at the bottom of a financial report. Gross profit is the total amount of money that’s left over after you subtract all of those expenses from your net sales. This is the total amount of revenue your company has brought in from sales, before any deductions.

Sales Discounts

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While net sales are the amount shown by the business’s actual sales during a period or time frame. Net income is the amount of substantial income earned from net sales and other operations of the business. Since the irrelevant metrics are removed while calculating net sales, it is a better reflection of the company’s turnover and health.

Types of transactions affecting net sales

The information about gross profit and net sales is normally available from income statement of the company. For companies using accrual accounting, they are booked when a transaction takes place. For companies using cash accounting they are booked when cash is received.

net sales are needed for reporting in documents such as income statements and tax forms. Net sales are also the starting point to finding other important figures. Once calculated, you can deduct the cost of goods sold (COGS) from your net sales to find gross profits.

Seasonal demand fluctuations and overstocking can also be a good reason to drive sales with reduced prices. You might also offer discounts when promoting new products to encourage customers to try them. Because https://www.bookstime.com/articles/audit-risk-model includes revenue forfeited from discounts, it’s a great way to understand the impact discounts are having. With this metric, you can begin to understand if offering markdowns on the listed sales price is causing you to lose too much revenue compared to the uplift in conversions it brings. It’s also a key metric you need when calculating how profitable you are. If you use gross sales instead in a profit calculation, you’re likely to overestimate your company’s profitability.

• It’s one of the top line metrics you’ll see on the income statement of product-based businesses, and it’s usually measured over weekly, monthly or annual accounting periods.
• It helps drive business decisions because you can make better decisions when you have computed net sales.
• This allows you to adjust discounts or provide more competitive pricing.
• If there is a large difference between both figures, the company may be giving large discounts on its sales.
• Net income comparisons from year to year can provide you and your accountant with a way to track business growth and financial health over a period of time.
• Net Sales are used finally to calculate the Profit margin, the most critical metrics for any small business to look at to know the company’s health.