A marketplace seller's dashboard reports sales, units, and a settlement deposit every two weeks. What it does not report is what any single unit earned after the marketplace took its referral fee, charged for picking, packing, and shipping it, charged for the months it sat in the warehouse, charged a surcharge because it sat too long, deducted the return that came back damaged, and after the advertising it took to make that sale. Sellers run on gross sales and deposit size; the business runs on contribution per SKU, and most sellers have never built it.
What does the settlement report contain that the dashboard does not?
Every fee, by order, by SKU. The settlement report is the marketplace's accounting of what it paid the seller and why: product sales, shipping and gift-wrap credits, promotional rebates, referral fees by category, fulfillment fees by size tier and weight, monthly and long-term storage fees, removal and disposal fees, refund administration fees, chargebacks, reimbursements for lost or damaged inventory, advertising charges where invoiced through the account, and adjustments — all netted into the deposit. Reading it by SKU over a trailing period is the only way to know the fees a product actually carries.
The fee structure moves without the seller changing anything. Fulfillment fees reset annually and by season; storage fees rise in the fourth quarter; aged-inventory surcharges apply at thresholds the seller may not track; low-inventory-level fees penalize products kept too lean; referral fees vary by category and by price band; the per-SKU margin is a moving target and is recomputed when the fee schedule changes, not when the seller remembers.
How is net margin per SKU built?
Start from the sale price net of promotions. List price less coupons, deals, and promotional rebates actually applied, from the settlement, not the catalog.
Subtract the marketplace fees the SKU actually incurred. Referral fee at the category rate; fulfillment fee at the product's size tier and weight, including any oversize or dimensional-weight effects; the SKU's share of monthly storage at its cubic footage and days in inventory; aged-inventory surcharges where the SKU crossed the thresholds; low-inventory fees where applicable; refund administration fees on returned units.
Subtract advertising attributed to the SKU. Sponsored product and brand spend by advertised SKU from the advertising reports, allocated to the units sold — because a SKU with a 28 percent advertising cost of sale has a 28-point margin reduction that the dashboard's "sales" line hides; organic versus advertised sales by SKU is tracked, since a product that only sells when advertised has a different economics from one that sells organically.
Subtract returns, net of recovered value. Return rate by SKU from the returns report; the refund issued; the disposition of the returned unit — resold as new, graded and resold as used, removed, or disposed — and the recovered value; the net return cost per unit sold is the refund plus the fulfillment of the return less recovered value, times the return rate.
Subtract landed cost. Purchase price, inbound freight, duties and tariffs, prep and labeling, and inbound shipping to the marketplace's warehouses — per unit, from the seller's own purchasing records, with tariff changes reflected when they land.
The result is contribution per unit, by SKU, over the trailing period. Multiply by units sold for contribution by SKU, rank the catalog, and read the table.
What do reimbursements and reconciliation recover?
The marketplace loses, damages, and misweighs inventory, and reimburses when asked. Lost inbound shipments, warehouse damage, customer returns never received back, overcharged fulfillment fees on mis-measured products, and refunds issued without the return being completed — each is a reimbursement claim with a filing window; sellers who reconcile inventory and fees find 1 to 3 percent of revenue in recoverable reimbursements, and the reconciliation is a monthly finance task, not an occasional audit.
Fee verification per SKU. The fulfillment fee charged against the product's measured dimensions and weight; a product listed in the wrong size tier is overcharged on every unit until the seller requests a re-measure, which is a recurring recovery.
How is the contribution table read?
Scale. Positive contribution per unit at acceptable advertising cost of sale, with organic demand; raise inventory, protect the listing, invest in reviews and content, expand to adjacent marketplaces.
Reprice. Positive gross margin but negative after fees and advertising; the fixes are a price increase tested against conversion, a size or packaging change that moves the fulfillment tier, a reduction in advertising to the organic baseline, a bundle that raises the average order and spreads the fee, or a move to merchant fulfillment where the economics favor it.
Kill. Negative contribution even at reduced advertising and corrected fees; liquidate, remove, or discontinue, and stop reordering; the hardest decision is the high-volume SKU that drives the dashboard and loses money on every unit, which the table makes undeniable.
The long tail. SKUs with low velocity carrying storage and aged-inventory fees; consolidate, remove, or liquidate, because the storage on a slow SKU can exceed its lifetime contribution.
Why do fulfillment-channel and inventory decisions follow from the table?
Fulfillment by the marketplace versus merchant fulfillment, by SKU. Marketplace fulfillment buys the shipping badge and conversion at a per-unit fee; merchant fulfillment avoids the fee and the storage at the cost of the seller's own operation and sometimes lower conversion; the decision is per SKU on contribution, not a blanket policy.
Inventory depth is a fee decision. Too deep incurs storage and aged-inventory surcharges; too lean incurs low-inventory fees and stockouts that lose rank; the reorder model by SKU uses sell-through, lead time, and the fee thresholds, and the inventory in the marketplace's warehouses is a balance-sheet asset reconciled monthly to the marketplace's inventory report.
Why is this CFO work?
The settlement report read by SKU, advertising attributed to the unit, returns netted of recovered value, landed cost with tariffs current, reimbursement reconciliation, and the contribution table are finance work; the scale-reprice-kill decisions are the owner's with the numbers in front of them; and the inventory and fulfillment-channel models are capital decisions. The operator owns the listings, the sourcing, and the advertising; the CFO owns the economics of the unit.
Worked example
A marketplace seller with 340 active SKUs across home and kitchen, US$6.8 million in gross sales, fulfilled by the marketplace.
| SKU (anonymized) | Units / yr | Sale price (net of promos) | Referral | Fulfillment | Storage + aged | Advertising / unit | Net returns / unit | Landed cost | Contribution / unit | Contribution / yr | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A — best seller | 41,000 | US$24.90 | US$3.74 | US$6.10 | US$0.41 | US$6.95 (28% ACOS) | US$1.60 | US$8.20 | −US$2.10 | −US$86,000 | Reprice or kill |
| B | 18,500 | US$38.50 | US$5.78 | US$7.40 | US$0.55 | US$2.30 (6%) | US$1.10 | US$11.60 | US$9.77 | US$181,000 | Scale |
| C | 9,200 | US$62.00 | US$9.30 | US$12.80 (oversize) | US$1.90 | US$4.40 | US$3.70 | US$19.50 | US$10.40 | US$96,000 | Scale; re-measure tier |
| D | 2,100 | US$19.90 | US$2.99 | US$5.60 | US$2.80 (aged) | US$3.10 | US$0.90 | US$6.40 | −US$1.89 | −US$4,000 | Liquidate |
| Long tail (190 SKUs under 300 units) | 21,000 | — | — | — | US$1.60 avg | — | — | — | US$0.40 avg | US$8,000 | Consolidate; remove 110 |
Illustrative figures for a hypothetical organization; not a client's data.
SKU A drove 30 percent of gross sales and the owner's view of the business, and lost US$2.10 on every unit because advertising at a 28 percent cost of sale had been treated as a growth investment rather than a per-unit cost. Repriced to US$27.90 with advertising capped at a 14 percent cost of sale, conversion fell 11 percent and contribution turned to +US$3.40 per unit; SKU C's fulfillment fee dropped US$2.10 per unit after a re-measure moved it out of the oversize tier; the long tail was cut by 110 SKUs; and the reimbursement reconciliation recovered US$118,000 in the first year. Annual contribution modeled from about US$410,000 to US$760,000 on 9 percent less gross sales.