How to calculate net revenue in SQL

What you need

Net revenue is what you keep from sales after discounts and refunds: gross sales minus discounts, returns and refunds. You need these columns, here from the sample file monthly.csv:

• revenue: revenue (net of discounts)
• refunds: refunds paid

CREATE TABLE monthly (
  month TEXT,          -- 'YYYY-MM'
  revenue INTEGER,
  refunds INTEGER
);

Step by step

1. Load monthly.csv into a table called monthly. The table only needs the month column and the columns below.
2. Run the first query to get one row per month.
3. Run the whole-period query. It adds up each column first and divides once; averaging the monthly results gives a different, usually wrong, answer.

The queries

SELECT
  month,
  ROUND(revenue - refunds, 2) AS net_revenue
FROM monthly
ORDER BY month;

SELECT ROUND(SUM(revenue) - SUM(refunds), 2) AS net_revenue
FROM monthly;

What you should get

Run against the sample data, the code above returns these values:

₹28,28,700 − ₹1,31,700 = ₹26,97,000

Notes for SQL

• Integer columns divide as integers in PostgreSQL, SQLite and SQL Server, so 3 / 4 gives 0. Multiplying by 1.0 (or 100.0) first makes the division decimal.
• NULLIF(x, 0) turns a zero denominator into NULL, so the query returns NULL for that row instead of failing with a division-by-zero error.
• Tested on SQLite and DuckDB. SUM, NULLIF and ROUND work the same in PostgreSQL, MySQL and BigQuery; SQL Server uses TOP instead of LIMIT where a query has one.

Where net revenue misleads

• Taxes collected (GST) are not revenue; take them out first.
• Accounting standards define net revenue more precisely than dashboards do. For filed accounts, use your accountant's figure.
• Refunds that relate to an earlier period shift revenue between months; that is a timing issue, not a trend.

The full explanation, with a calculator, is on the Net revenue page.

Same metric, other tools

• Net revenue in Excel and Google Sheets
• Net revenue in Python (pandas)

Related metrics in SQL

• How to calculate refund rate in SQL
• How to calculate return rate in SQL
• How to calculate gross profit in SQL

Learn more about SQL

• Python and SQL for data analysis, side by side — 3 min read
• How to find out what changed in your sales data — 2 min read

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.