ToolSahla, Tools Sahla

How to summarise your store expenses

At the end of the month you know how much you sold, but do you know how much you spent on shipping? On ads? Did packaging cost more than last month? A simple expense summary answers these questions in minutes.

Published · 2 min read

Three ways to see the same expenses

  • By currency: the total for each currency on its own.
  • By month: to see whether your spending is rising or falling.
  • By category: shipping, packaging, ads and so on, to see where your money goes.
Worked example

Four expenses: Shipping 120.50 SAR on 2026-01-05, Packaging 80 SAR on 2026-01-18, Shipping 45.25 AED on 2026-02-02, and Ads 300 SAR on 2026-02-09.

Result: SAR 500.50 in total, of which 200.50 in January and 300.00 in February, and AED 45.25 in February.

The Shipping category shows 120.50 SAR and 45.25 AED on two separate lines, never merged into one number.

Why doesn't the tool add currencies together?

Because 120.50 riyals and 45.25 dirhams do not make 165.75 of anything. If you want one figure, pick a reporting currency and type an exchange rate for each other currency yourself. The converted amount appears beside the original ones, labelled as using your own rates. The tool does not fetch exchange rates.

How to do it

  1. Open the Expense summary generator tool and add a row per expense: date, category, amount and currency, or import a CSV file.
  2. If your file uses different column names, map each column to the right field.
  3. Read the totals by currency, month and category.
  4. Download the summary as CSV or PDF.

Common mistakes the tool flags

  • Dates are written YYYY-MM-DD. A format like 05/01/2026 shows an error with its row number, because guessing the day and month order could change the result.
  • A negative amount is read as a refund and lowers the total, so check the sign.
  • “Shipping” and “Shipping costs” are two different categories. Keep category names consistent for an accurate summary.
  • Rows that could not be read are listed by number instead of being dropped silently.

This is a summariser, not accounting software: no tax, no depreciation, no carried-over balances. Once you know your fixed costs, work out how many units you need to sell to cover them with the Break-even calculator, and check your real profit with the Profit margin calculator.

Common questions

How big a file can I import?

Import was tested up to 2,000 rows and a 2 MB file, encoded as UTF-8.

Are my expenses saved?

No, nothing is saved after you close the page, so download the summary before closing it.

Is my data sent to a server?

No, the calculation runs inside your browser.