Problem with Profit Percentages

[Catalina]

If you buy something for $100 and sell it for $150 you make a 50% profit.
Straightforward and easy to calculate.

But what if you get the item for free ($0) and sell it for a certain amount?
You cannot calculate the percentage from $0, can you?

I am thinking about making the buy price just $0.01. That way it is possible and
it eliminates the dived by zero error.

Any thoughts about this?

Reno

 

[CJ_London]

If you buy something for $100 and sell it for $150 you make a 50% profit.
Straightforward and easy to calculate

the other way to look at it is you make a margin of 33.33%. Also easy to calculate and no issue with dividing by zero

- unless of course you give it away

 

[Catalina]

the other way to look at it is you make a margin of 33.33%. Also easy to calculate and no issue with dividing by zero

- unless of course you give it away

Good idea. I will look into it. Thanks.

 

[arnelgp]

then make the CostOfGood same as the SellingPrice?

Profit = IIf([CostOfGood] = 0, [SellingPrice], [CostOfGood]) - [CostOfGood]

 

[gemma-the-husky]

If it's free the profit percent is infinite. Simply N/A, is best. It's not a number you have to sum, so there's no issues.
Do whatever works without causing a run time error.

Normally you would probably evaluate profit as a percentage of sales, so zero cost would give you 100%. If you want to evaluate the mark up, then I suggest N/A as above.

 

[Thales750]

If you buy something for $100 and sell it for $150 you make a 50% profit.
Straightforward and easy to calculate.

You have your terminology wrong.
That's a 50% markup and 33.34% profit. Gross Profit is measured as a percentage of the selling price after direct cost of items sold.

50% profit is 100% markup.