What your business actually earns (and why the notebook won't tell you)

Almost every small business we know in Xalapa keeps its accounts the same way: a notebook where the day's sales get written down. And the notebook isn't wrong — it's discipline, and it's more than many do. The problem is what the notebook can't tell you: how much of what you sold is actually yours.

Selling 10,000 pesos a week feels good. But if supplies, gas, bags, the Saturday helper and the shop's electricity bill all come out of that, what's left can be far less than you think — and sometimes, on some products, less than nothing.

The three numbers the notebook won't give you

• ·Margin per product: from each piece you sell, what remains after what it cost to make or buy it. It's common to discover your star product leaves less than one you barely promote.
• ·Weekly fixed costs: what you pay whether you sell or not — rent, power, wages, internet. Until margin (not sales) covers that amount, you haven't earned a peso.
• ·Real weekly profit: sales minus cost of what you sold minus fixed costs. It answers the question that matters: did the business give or take this week?

Why mixing household spending makes it worse

If groceries, gas and business supplies all come from the same money, no number will ever work out. You don't need an accountant to fix it today: two envelopes, two accounts or two cards — one for the business, one for home — and a fixed salary the business pays you. That single change makes everything else visible.

How to start this week, no systems or apps

• ·Pick your 5 best-selling products and work out each one's real cost — supplies, packaging, waste included.
• ·Add up a normal week's fixed costs. Write it on the notebook's first page, where you'll see it.
• ·On Sunday, do the full subtraction: sales − costs − fixed costs. That's your number. Repeat for four weeks before drawing conclusions.

Once the habit exists, the next step is to stop doing it by hand: a simple record that calculates on its own and shows you every Monday how the business is doing. That's exactly the first thing we build in many projects — but the habit comes first, and you can start it today with what you already have.