Categories that match a shop
Freight and transport, loading and unloading, rent, staff salary, electricity, phone and internet, repairs, packing material, travel, and the general small spending that comes out of the counter drawer. Recording an expense against a category takes a few seconds, and after two months you have something you never had before: a monthly breakdown of where the money goes. The first look at that report is usually the most useful five minutes a shop owner spends all year.
Freight is the one worth watching
In material supply, transport is not overhead — it is close to cost of goods, and it moves. Diesel changes, a hired truck rate changes, a longer site run costs more than the rate you quoted. Recording freight both on the purchase side (into landed cost) and on the delivery side (charged to the customer) shows whether you are actually recovering what delivery costs you. Plenty of shops discover they are subsidising deliveries to their most demanding customer.
Making the cash book close
An expense paid from the counter and not recorded is the single most common reason a day does not tie. Once expenses are recorded as they are paid, the closing cash figure means something and a shortfall is visible the same evening. That is the practical benefit ahead of any report — it turns the cash book from an approximation into a check.
Recurring costs and what they really total
Rent, salaries and electricity are known monthly figures that nobody adds up until the year ends. Having them recorded means your monthly profit picture includes them rather than being sales minus purchases, which is the calculation most shops actually run in their heads and which is always too optimistic. Knowing the real monthly cost of running the shop is what tells you whether a thin-margin bulk line is worth the effort at all.
The expenses shops forget to count
Three costs are almost never included when a shopkeeper works out whether a month was good. Interest on borrowed working capital, which in a credit trade with a sixty-day cycle is a real monthly number rather than an annual one. The cost of a vehicle — not just diesel, but the driver, insurance, servicing and the fact that it is wearing out. And breakage, spillage and short deliveries, which in cement and tiles is a predictable percentage that never appears in any register. Recording all three turns a rough sense of profit into a figure you can act on, and it usually explains where a busy year went.