Record the economic role once
Use Expenses in Profit & Loss for seller-side income and costs not already represented correctly by product cost snapshots, shipping evidence, payment ledgers, refunds, or fee rules.
- Open Expenses → One-Off Expenses & Income and choose Expense or Income.
- Choose a stable category.
- Choose account scope, one form, or an exact order where the category allows it.
- Choose how the amount relates to existing evidence and its cost component.
- Enter its seller-local date, amount, and a short private note.
- Click Add. If EZFormz presents an overlap review, resolve it and confirm before the entry is saved.
Use a variable-order-cost category for fulfillment activity, an operating-expense category for overhead, and an other-income-or-expense category for activity outside merchandise contribution. Account operating overhead appears only in account Business Net Profit. It is not guessed into a form Operating Result or order contribution, and an operating-overhead entry cannot be attached to an order.
Use stable categories
EZFormz provides six locked system categories. The account owner can add up to 50 custom categories and choose each category's permanent treatment class: variable order cost, operating expense, or other income or expense.
A custom name can change without rewriting historical rows. Deleting a custom category stops new use but keeps prior adjustments joined to the same stable category identity. Category creation, renaming, and deletion are owner-only. A collaborator with Manage Profit & Loss costs can use available categories within an authorized form but cannot administer the owner's category list.
Avoid counting the same cost twice
Choose one explicit role for every adjustment:
- Replaces an existing cost (Replacement) substitutes for an already represented cost.
- Adds to an existing cost (Supplemental) adds a separate amount to represented evidence.
- Separate overhead (Independent) is unrelated overhead or income.
- Already counted — exclude keeps the record visible but excludes it from totals.
EZFormz previews overlaps with integrated label postage or insurance, configured payment fees, confirmed refunds, recurring shipping, and the selected shipping policy. When a collision appears, review the affected orders and amount, choose an allowed role, and confirm that review before saving.
Ambiguous and duplicate effects remain visible but are excluded rather than guessed into totals. A replacement payment fee must be attached to the exact order whose estimate it replaces; it supersedes that estimate once and does not also become operating expense.
Add per-order shipping costs
First select the form you intend to edit and use Assumptions & data policy → Manage report defaults. On the applicable Account default or form override card, choose Shipping policy → Review, check the scope, select Enter shipping cost per order (Per-order manual), and click Confirm policy. The Order Shipping Costs manual editors appear only when the report uses this policy.
Open Shipping & Fees → Order Shipping Costs, enter the Manual cost, and select its Shipping cost treatment. Use Replace label cost when the amount replaces another postage source, or Add to label cost when it is a separate fulfillment cost. Click the row's Save, or Save edited costs for all edited rows. If overlap review appears, check the affected orders and amounts, confirm the selected treatments, then click Save again. You can alternatively add a one-off adjustment with that order ID under Expenses.
Integrated confirmed postage purchases minus confirmed refunds take precedence under actual shipping economics. A pending carrier refund remains a cost until confirmed. Multiple competing postage sources, missing amounts, or unsupported non-USD facts produce a warning instead of a guessed cost.
These entries affect P&L only. They do not change the order total, label, tracking, buyer receipt, payment, or standard order Sheet.
Add recurring income or expenses
Open Expenses → Recurring Rules. Choose Expense or Income, category, scope, role and component, then enter the amount, weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly cadence, start date, optional end date, and note. Click Add rule and complete any overlap review. The rule freezes its seller timezone and calendar anchors so later timezone changes do not move prior occurrence identity. EZFormz generates occurrences for the selected report window without creating endless permanent adjustment rows.
For one occurrence, you can:
- Skip it so the generated amount does not count.
- Change that occurrence's editable values and click Save to change only that occurrence for reporting.
- Convert it to a one-off adjustment while suppressing the generated copy.
Retries preserve one active effect for a rule and local date, so the same occurrence is not counted twice. Review scope and role carefully before converting or supplementing a recurring amount.
Configure payment-fee estimates
Expand Assumptions & data policy, click Manage report defaults, and find Payment Fee Rules. Set a reviewed account default, then add form or payment-method overrides only where they differ. Click Save fee rules to apply them. The matching order is payment method, form, then account. Rules can be None, flat, percent, or percent plus flat.
No matching reviewed rule means missing configuration. A reviewed None rule means confirmed zero. All calculated fee amounts are labelled estimates and use the saved order total as their base.
Choose how a buyer-paid payment surcharge affects the estimate:
- Revenue keeps the surcharge in sales and expenses the full estimated fee.
- Fee offset keeps the surcharge in sales and reduces the estimated fee, never below zero.
- Ignored removes the surcharge from P&L gross sales and expenses the full estimated fee.
Fee rules affect P&L only. They never change checkout surcharges, order totals, payment rows, receipts, payment requests, or standard order Sheets.
Protect private financial records
The Expense Overview separates one-off and recurring amounts, shows their scope, and summarizes category activity over seller-local day, week, or month periods. Detail tables can show category, amount, form ID, and order ID.
Current P&L artifacts omit free-text expense notes and customer names, but they retain sensitive financial amounts, categories, form names or IDs, and order IDs. Older order and adjustment CSVs, including those from the previous interface if it is available, can include customer names and notes. Dedicated P&L Sheets and every downloaded report should remain in owner-controlled storage. Avoid putting secrets, buyer identity, provider credentials, or unnecessary personal information in an expense note.
When insurance is excluded, shipping insurance replacements and supplements are excluded from both amounts and source warnings. An independent expense remains included because it is separate from the shipping policy.