I ll be honest:
before building Okiela, I also got hyped by profit dashboards .
The screenshots always look amazing:
big Net Profit numbers, pretty charts, dark mode.
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But once you sit down with real founders and real data, a bunch of common issues keep popping up:
- Some tools call it profit , but it s literally just revenue minus COGS.
- No payment fees, no platform fees, no shipping cost, no COD failures, no overhead.
- Looks great in a screenshot, feels very different when payroll and ad invoices hit.
- Some tools import from Shopify, but their GMV and order count don t match Shopify s own reports.
The answer is usually we calculate it differently .
Which is basically a nice way of saying just trust us .
- Refunds often get lumped into one vague line.
Full refunds, partial refunds, shipping only refunds, refunds hitting next month all mashed together.
- Good months look amazing. Refund months feel like a mystery.
And onboarding
Connect all your tools, map all your costs, fill in every COGS and overhead line then we ll show you something.
Meanwhile, most founders have 15 minutes between calls, or half an hour at night after putting kids to bed.
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I don t think those products are bad .
They re just not built for how messy real life looks.
So when I started working on Okiela, I forced a few rules on myself:
Call things what they are.
- Revenue is revenue.
- Gross profit is gross profit.
- True Profit only appears when the math is actually there.
Make the first step a sanity check against Shopify/the platform.
If GMV and order count are off, we need to explain why.
No it s close enough, don t worry .
Treat refunds like first class citizens.
Every refund event, per line item, including which fees are kept or returned.
BFCM sales in November, refunds in January they need to show up clearly in the timeline.
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Don t hold value hostage behind a huge setup.
The flow has to look like:
1. Check numbers vs Shopify.
2. Add basic COGS/costs.
3. See 2 3 obvious profit leaks.
4. Get 1 2 moves you can actually make today.
I m not trying to build the flashiest analytics tool on the market.
I m trying to build the one screen a founder can open and say:
If we stopped selling tomorrow, here s how much money we really made in the last 12 months.
If you ve ever stared at a profit number and felt that something was off, reply profit or DM me.
I d rather you plug your own data into Okiela, break it if you can, and then tell me whether it deserves to exist.
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