Category Breakdown Report

What the Category Breakdown Report Shows

The Category Breakdown report groups your sales and cost data by product category — for example, Candles, Gift Sets, Jewellery, Leather Goods. For each category, the report shows:

• Total revenue from sales in the period.
• Total cost of goods sold (materials, labour, machines, overhead).
• Gross profit.
• Gross margin percentage.
• Number of units sold.

The data is presented as a bar chart (for visual comparison) and a sortable table.

Why This Report Matters

Most craft businesses sell multiple types of products. Some product lines are more profitable than others, and without breaking down performance by category, high-margin lines can mask the poor performance of others — and vice versa. The Category Breakdown report makes the contrast visible.

For example, if your overall gross margin is 38%, that might be the average of a 52% Jewellery category and a 12% Gift Sets category. The overall number looks acceptable, but it hides the fact that Gift Sets are barely breaking even and dragging your profitability down significantly.

How to Use the Data

Identify Categories Needing Attention

Sort the table by gross margin %. Categories falling significantly below your target margin deserve investigation. The most common causes are:

• Prices set too low relative to actual production costs.
• High material costs that have not been passed on to the customer.
• Products within the category that are dragging the category average down.

Gift Sets Example

A craft business reviews their Category Breakdown and finds:

Gift Sets generate €900 of revenue but only €108 of gross profit — a 12% margin. They are clearly consuming disproportionate production effort relative to their return. The business owner investigates and finds that gift sets involve significant assembly time that was never fully costed. A repricing exercise brings gift set margins to 38% and improves overall business profitability.

Redirect Production Effort

Combined with the Top Products report, Category Breakdown helps you decide where to invest production time. If Jewellery consistently runs at 50%+ margin and Gift Sets at 12%, the business decision — whether to reprice, reformulate, or reduce the gift set range — becomes clear.

Setting Up Categories

Category Breakdown is only useful if your products are correctly categorised. If most products sit in an uncategorised group, the report loses its value. Take a few minutes to assign product categories in your product settings — it makes this report significantly more actionable.