Small Store Pricing Calculator
Work out a shelf price from what the item costs you, the overhead it has to carry, the payment fee it will be charged, and the margin you need to keep afterwards.
Inputs
Result
Pricing for Etsy? See a worked example with Etsy fees, and what a discount costs you.
Planning estimate only. Replace assumptions with your real costs, contracts, taxes, and market conditions.
How it works
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Enter what the item costs you
The unit cost, plus anything you pay to get it onto the shelf: shipping in, duty, the packaging you add. Anything that scales with each unit sold belongs here.
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Add the overhead it has to carry
Rent, staff and utilities do not pay for themselves. A common approach is total overhead divided by the units you expect to sell, which is rough but stops you pricing as though rent were free.
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Set the fee and the margin
Both are taken off the selling price, so the calculator divides rather than adds. That is what makes the result a price at which you genuinely keep the margin, instead of one where the card fee comes out of it.
Who this is for
Setting a shelf price
Start from the margin the shop needs rather than from a competitor’s ticket, then decide separately whether the market will carry it.
Reviewing after a cost rise
When a supplier raises prices, this is how far yours has to move to stand still. It is usually further than it feels like it should be.
Planning a discount
The calculator prices from a margin, so to test a promotion, lower the target margin until the recommended price matches the sale price you have in mind. The margin you had to drop to is what the promotion actually costs.
Comparing suppliers
A cheaper unit with worse terms is not always cheaper. Running both through with their real costs settles it faster than comparing the invoices.
Questions
- What is the difference between markup and margin?
- Markup is measured against your cost; margin against the selling price. A 50 percent markup is a 33 percent margin. Confusing the two is the most common pricing mistake in retail, and it always goes the same way — the shop earns less than it thinks.
- How much overhead should each item carry?
- One common approach is total overhead divided by expected unit sales. It is rough, but it stops you pricing as though rent were free. Items that turn over quickly can reasonably carry less than ones that sit.
- Why is the price higher than cost plus margin?
- Because the fee and the margin both come out of the price rather than being added to the cost. Adding them undershoots every time: at a 40 percent margin and a 3 percent fee, a $14 cost needs a price just over $24.50, which this rounds to $25 — not the $19.60 that cost plus margin suggests.
- Why is there no price?
- Because the payment fee and the target margin add up to 100 percent or more. At that point there is no price at which the numbers work, so the tool shows a warning and no price instead of a negative figure. Lower one of the two.
- Should the price end in .99?
- That is a positioning question, not an arithmetic one. Work out the price you need first, then decide how to present it — and check that the rounding you apply has not quietly given back a point of margin. The result shows the margin at the nearest .99 price above yours for exactly that check.
- Does this include sales tax or VAT?
- No. The payment fee field is for card processing, not tax. Whether tax sits on top of the shelf price or inside it depends on where you trade, and it should be handled after this figure rather than mixed into it.
- What is the lowest price that covers costs?
- The price at which the profit is exactly zero after the payment fee: your cost divided by one minus the fee percentage. Selling below it loses money on every item. It is a floor for discounts and sales, not a price to aim for, because it leaves nothing for the margin you actually want.