Most founders find out how the month went when the accountant says so — three weeks into the next month. By then, you've made four more weeks of decisions on top of numbers you couldn't see.
The five-minute weekly check
- Pull revenue that actually arrived (payouts, not booked orders).
- Subtract COGS for everything you sold that week.
- Subtract platform fees, payment processing, shipping, and refunds.
- Subtract ad spend — all of it, all channels.
- Look at what's left. That's your true profit for the week.
Five inputs. One number. It's not a full P&L and it's not meant to be — it's a pulse. It answers the only question that matters this week: did the business make money?
Why weekly and not monthly
Because mistakes compound. A campaign that loses $400 a week is $2,000 by the time a monthly report surfaces it. A weekly number catches it in week one, while it's still a rounding error and an easy fix.
The questions the number should trigger
- Which campaign made money this week — and which just spent it?
- Did any SKU's margin move more than two points? Why?
- Is ad spend growing faster than profit? That's the classic scale trap.
- Is the profit number moving with revenue, or against it?
Make it automatic
This is exactly the loop Data Doodle automates: payouts, fees, COGS, shipping, refunds, and ad spend pulled together daily, so the weekly check is reading a dashboard instead of building a spreadsheet. Start with the calculator, then let the doodles keep the math honest.