In Excel or Google Sheets, gross profit for a whole period is SUM(B2:B7) - SUM(C2:C7), where each SUM covers one column of monthly figures. On the sample data it returns ₹12,88,800.
Gross profit = Revenue − Cost of goods sold
What you need
Gross profit is revenue minus the cost of the goods you sold in the same period. You need these columns, here from the sample file monthly.csv:
- Revenue (net of discounts): column B (revenue)
- Cost of goods sold: column C (cogs)
Step by step
- Download monthly.csv below and open it: in Excel use File → Open; in Google Sheets use File → Import → Upload. The headers land in row 1 and the six months in rows 2 to 7.
- Click any empty cell and enter =SUM(B2:B7) - SUM(C2:C7) for the whole six months. It adds up each column first and then does the arithmetic once, which is the correct way to combine months.
- For each month, click AQ2, enter =B2 - C2 and drag the fill handle down to row 7.
- Format the results as currency with two decimals.
- If a month can have zero in the denominator, wrap the formula so it shows a blank instead of #DIV/0!: =IFERROR(B2 - C2,"").
The formulas
=SUM(B2:B7) - SUM(C2:C7)=B2 - C2What you should get
Run against the sample data, the code above returns these values:
| Month | revenue | cogs | gross_profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-01 | 4,12,000 | 2,26,600 | ₹1,85,400 |
| 2026-02 | 4,38,500 | 2,36,800 | ₹2,01,700 |
| 2026-03 | 4,71,200 | 2,59,200 | ₹2,12,000 |
| 2026-04 | 4,55,800 | 2,55,200 | ₹2,00,600 |
| 2026-05 | 5,02,300 | 2,71,200 | ₹2,31,100 |
| 2026-06 | 5,48,900 | 2,90,900 | ₹2,58,000 |
| Whole period | 28,28,700 | 15,39,900 | ₹12,88,800 |
₹28,28,700 − ₹15,39,900 = ₹12,88,800
Notes for Excel
- Google Sheets accepts the same formulas. If your spreadsheet locale uses a comma as the decimal separator, Sheets and Excel expect semicolons between function arguments instead of commas.
- Averaging the monthly results with AVERAGE() gives a different and usually wrong answer for the period, because every month counts the same however large it was.
- Excel tables (Insert → Table) let you write the same formula with column names instead of letters, which is easier to read and survives inserted columns.
Where gross profit misleads
- COGS must match the period of the revenue: the cost of the goods that were sold, not of the goods you bought this month.
- Returns reduce revenue; the returned stock, if resellable, reduces COGS too. Handle both or neither.
- Payment gateway fees and shipping are often left out of COGS. That is fine, but then contribution margin is the better guide to unit economics.
The full explanation, with a calculator, is on the Gross profit page.
Same metric, other tools
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About the data on this page
The figures come from a small made-up dataset, printed above in full so you can check every number by hand. Download it as monthly.csv. The results are computed from those rows when the page is built, and the Excel formulas, SQL and Python on these pages are run against the same rows before publishing, so the code and the answers agree.
To get these numbers from your own data without writing formulas, try AnalyzeIt: ask in plain words and it shows the working behind every figure.
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