Accounting glossary
What is margin?
Profit as a percentage of the selling price. A $60 cost sold at $100 carries a 40% margin. Not to be confused with markup, which measures against cost — the same sale is a 66.7% markup. Mixing the two up misprices entire catalogues.
Example
Buy at $60, sell at $100: the margin is $40 ÷ $100, or 40%.
The same transaction has a markup of $40 ÷ $60, or 66.7%. Confusing the two is the most common pricing error in retail.
In SeroBooks
Group price lists and margin-aware reporting keep the arithmetic out of staff hands. Margin calculator →