Profit Guard: find where you're quietly losing money

Profit Guard scans your last 90 days of sales against what each order actually cost you, in cost price, eBay and payment fees, and postage, then ranks the listings that are quietly eating your margin. Use this article to understand what it checks, how to read the ranking, and why some orders never appear in it.

What Profit Guard checks

For every order in the last 90 days, Profit Guard works out the real profit after cost price, eBay fees, payment processing fees and postage are all taken into account. It then groups this by listing (SKU) and ranks the listings that are either loss making or running on a thin margin, ordered by how much money you could recover by fixing them.

Each result on the list comes with a one-line fix, a short, specific suggestion such as raising the price, switching postage service or checking the cost price, so you know what to do next without having to dig through the numbers yourself.

Reading the ranking

Listings are not sorted by how unprofitable they look in percentage terms. They are sorted by recoverable money, the amount you are realistically losing across those orders. A listing that loses a small amount per sale but sells often can rank above a listing that loses more per sale but rarely sells, because the first one is costing you more overall.

Work down the list from the top. Fixing the highest ranked leaks first gives you the biggest improvement in profit for the least effort.

Profit visibility

Profit Guard also shows a profit visibility figure. This tells you what proportion of your last 90 days of sales it could actually analyse for margin leaks, based on how many of those orders have a cost price recorded.

A low profit visibility figure is a signal on its own: it means a meaningful share of your sales are currently invisible to margin checking, not just to Profit Guard but to any true profit figure DashVue shows you. Treat improving it as part of the fix, not a side task.

Acting on a fix

The one-line fix against each listing is a starting point, not an automatic change. Profit Guard does not alter your prices, postage settings or listings for you. If a fix involves changing a live eBay listing, you will need a Full Access eBay connection to publish that change. With a read-only connection you can still see the leak and draft a fix, but you will not be able to push it live to eBay.

DashVue publishes fixed price (Buy It Now) listings, so any suggested fix that involves changing a listing assumes a fixed price format, not an auction.