Campaign profit calculator: is your store really making money after returns, delivery and VAT?

How to read the result

The first thing to look at isn't the profit. It's the gap between two lines: platform ROAS and break-even ROAS. The first is what Google Ads, Meta or Snapchat shows you. The second is where profit starts for your store, with your costs.

• If platform ROAS sits comfortably above break-even, the campaign makes money, and the real question becomes how far you can raise spend before the gap closes.
• If the two are close, the campaign is paying for itself and little more. One season with more refusals or pricier clicks will tip it into a loss. That's why the calculator calls a campaign "barely pays for itself" when its profit is under 15% of its ad spend plus campaign fees. Put another way, platform ROAS is less than about 15% above break-even, so a 15% rise in cost per order wipes the profit out.
• If platform ROAS is below break-even, a bigger budget makes the loss bigger. It doesn't fix it.

Two cautions before you act on the gap. Each platform counts the orders it claims, and Google and Meta can both claim the same one, so check the platform's order count against the store's. And a first order that loses money can still pay off if those customers buy again; that call rests on customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, not on this calculator.

My view: break-even ROAS belongs on the first line of every weekly ads report, above anything the platform says. Without it, nobody in the meeting knows whether a ROAS of 4 is good news or a slow leak.

Why platform ROAS flatters cash-on-delivery stores

The platform records an order's value the moment it's placed. Whatever happens after that never reaches it unless you send it back yourself. For a store in Saudi Arabia or Jordan that relies on cash on delivery, a lot happens after that moment:

After the order	What it does to profit	What you enter
The order is cancelled before it ships	No revenue, but no shipping either	Orders cancelled before shipping
The customer refuses delivery or returns the item	No revenue, but you pay shipping out and back	Refusal rate, cost per refused order
Tax is inside the price	15% VAT in Saudi Arabia, 16% general sales tax in Jordan (the general rate; some goods carry less), and none of it is yours	VAT or sales tax rate
Product cost	Two products at the same price with different margins show the same ROAS and very different profit	Product cost as % of the pre-VAT price
Delivery, COD collection and payment fees	Paid on every order that's delivered	Net delivery cost, payment fees

I'm not saying platform ROAS is a false number. It's accurate about what it measures: the value of orders placed. The trouble is that the decision built on it, more budget or less, needs the value of what's left, not what was placed.

The worked example: a ROAS of 4 that loses money

The calculator opens on a hypothetical example with round numbers, chosen to show how a ROAS that looks healthy can hide a loss:

A hypothetical example with round numbers: a store in Saudi Arabia spends SAR 10,000 on ads in a month and gets 200 orders at an average of SAR 200 including VAT. The platform reports SAR 40,000 in sales: a ROAS of 4.

Then the calculator starts subtracting. 18% of orders were refused at the door, leaving 164 delivered orders worth SAR 32,800. About SAR 4,278 of that is VAT, which isn't the store's money. Product cost is 45% of the pre-VAT price. Delivery is SAR 25 per delivered order and SAR 35 per refused one. Payment fees are 2.5%.

The result: about SAR 9,507 is left before ads, and the ads cost SAR 10,000. The store lost roughly SAR 493 to deliver 164 orders, and its break-even ROAS is about 4.2. The campaign needed more than 4.2 on the platform just to not lose money.

Now drop the refusal rate from 18% to 13% and the loss turns into a small profit of about SAR 513. Here, five points of refusals are worth about as much as getting the same orders for 10% less ad spend. One condition: those five points have to become delivered orders. If confirming on WhatsApp only cancels them before they ship, enter 5% in cancellations and change the refusal rate to 13.7% (the same 26 refusals, now out of 190 shipped orders, because the refusal rate is counted on shipped orders). You save the return shipping (about SAR 350), the loss shrinks to about SAR 140, and the campaign still loses money.

The formulas behind the calculator

Nothing is hidden. Here is the arithmetic in order, for one month and the campaign's orders only:

Line	Formula
Shipped orders	orders × (1 − cancellation rate)
Refused orders	shipped orders × refusal rate
Delivered orders	shipped orders − refused orders
Collected from customers	delivered orders × average order value
Net revenue	collected ÷ (1 + VAT rate)
Product cost	net revenue × product cost %
Payment fees	collected × fee %
Delivery	delivered × delivery cost + refused × cost per refused order
Contribution before ads	net revenue − product cost − fees − delivery
Campaign profit	contribution − ad spend − campaign fixed costs
Platform ROAS	(orders × average order value) ÷ ad spend
Break-even ROAS	(orders × average order value) ÷ (contribution − fixed costs)
Maximum cost per order	(contribution − fixed costs) ÷ orders

I assume a refused item goes back into stock in sellable condition, so its product cost isn't counted. If your products spoil or can't be resold, raise the cost per refused order by what you lose.

It's the same formula I walk through in High ROAS, losing money: break-even ROAS is 1 divided by the contribution margin, as long as that margin is calculated on the value the platform records and the campaign has no fixed costs; with fixed costs, subtract them from the contribution first.

Before you compare it with a dashboard, check two things. The break-even here is based on the orders and order value you entered. If the platform reports a different conversion value for the month, because it claims more orders or its tag sends values before VAT or with shipping, multiply the break-even by (the platform's conversion value ÷ (your orders × average order value)) before you compare. And dashboards show cost before tax: if your business pays VAT on its ad invoices and can't reclaim it, multiply the break-even ROAS by (1 + that rate) before you compare.

What to do with the result

Under the result, the calculator ranks four changes by what each adds to your profit: a quarter fewer refusals, a 10% higher order value, the same orders for 10% less spend, or product cost three points lower. The list is sorted by size, not by effort, and each change is calculated with everything else held equal.

In the example, a higher order value adds the most (about SAR 1,487 a month), then lower spend (about SAR 1,000) and a quarter fewer refusals (about SAR 906). Two cautions: a bigger basket can raise refusals on cash on delivery, and confirming orders on WhatsApp turns some refusals into cancellations before shipping, which saves the return shipping but not the sale. For the moves that need work outside the ad account, see raising average order value without discounting and following up leads on WhatsApp.

If the calculator shows a loss and you can't tell where to start, that's what I do in a revenue-based marketing audit: I match each platform's numbers against the store's and the courier's, and find where the money leaks before anyone touches the budget.