How Operating Expenses Work
Updated October 3, 2026
Operating expenses are the costs of running your business that do not belong to a single order: rent, salaries, bookkeeping, insurance, a one-off photo shoot. You enter each one once, and Profitario books it on the right days and deducts it from your Net Profit. This article explains the Operating page and what belongs on it. The guides below cover each task in detail.
- Where
- In the sidebar, open Expenses, then Operating.
- Who
- Every store with fixed costs. Team members whose access is limited to specific stores do not see this page.
- Updates
- An expense is booked when you save it, for every day from its start date, past and future. Orders are not recalculated.
Guides for this page#
The Operating Page#
Next to Add Expense, View Report opens the Expense Report and Export downloads the list as CSV or Excel. Click Name, Amount, Timeframe or Created in the table header to sort.
What Counts as an Operating Expense#
An operating expense is an amount per period of time (a day, a week, a month, a quarter, a year) or a single amount on one date. It is booked on calendar days, not on orders. Costs that depend on what you sell are entered elsewhere:
| You want to record | Use |
|---|---|
| Rent, salaries, insurance, a freelancer, a one-off purchase | An operating expense, see Add an Operating Expense |
| An app or software subscription | Expenses > App Expenses, see Track App and Software Subscriptions (App Expenses) |
| What you pay your supplier for the products | Product costs, see How Product Costs Work |
| What it costs you to ship an order | Shipping costs, see Set Up Your Shipping Costs |
| The fee of your payment provider | Transaction fees, see How to Add Transaction Fees |
| A cost per order, or a percentage of the order value | A rule-based expense, see How to Add Rule-Based Expenses (Automatic Order Costs) |
The difference to a rule-based expense: a rule grows with your orders (40 orders at $0.40 give $16.00), an operating expense is the same amount whether you sell 1 order or 1,000.
Limits#
- The amount is always in the store's currency. Other currencies are not converted.
- An expense belongs to the store it was created in. It cannot be shared or split across stores.
- Operating expenses are booked per day, not per order. They are not part of an order's costs or profit.
Common questions
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