As of 13 August 2026, AI can calculate profit margins for your stock.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your stock system, spreadsheet or accounting software and export the relevant products, quantities, purchase costs, selling prices, discounts and returns.
   2. Open your VAT records and supplier invoices, then label each price and cost as including or excluding VAT and add delivery, import or other landed costs where your business includes them in stock cost.
   3. Write down the cost method used for the stock, such as the method stated in your accounting records, and list any operating costs you want treated separately from cost of goods sold.
   4. Paste the stock data, business rules and cost treatment into a current chatbot using the supplied prompt, asking it to flag missing figures instead of filling them in.
   5. Compare the chatbot's source figures, formulas and totals with the original export, price list and invoices, then recalculate a sample of lines in your spreadsheet.
   6. Correct any inconsistent inputs, rerun the calculation, and send the final table to your bookkeeper or finance colleague if the figures will drive a major pricing, purchasing or reporting decision.

   Prompt

   Calculate the profit margins for the stock data below. Use only the figures I provide and do not invent, estimate or silently fill in missing values.
   
   First state which definitions you can calculate:
   1. Gross profit per unit = selling price excluding VAT minus unit cost excluding VAT.
   2. Gross margin percentage = gross profit divided by selling price excluding VAT, multiplied by 100.
   3. Markup percentage = gross profit divided by unit cost excluding VAT, multiplied by 100.
   4. Total gross profit = total sales excluding VAT minus total cost of goods sold.
   
   Calculate net margin only if I provide operating costs and explain exactly how you allocate them. Keep VAT, discounts, returns, delivery, import charges, payment fees and other costs separate unless I explicitly tell you how to include them. If the stock uses different purchase costs, identify the required cost method rather than choosing one silently. Show the formula, inputs and result for every product, followed by totals and a short list of missing or inconsistent figures. Use pounds and percentage points, round monetary results to two decimal places and percentages to two decimal places. Check that quantities, prices and totals reconcile. Present the results in a table that I can copy into a spreadsheet.
   
   Stock data:
   [Paste the stock export, price list or table here]
   
   Business rules and cost treatment:
   [State whether prices include or exclude VAT, how discounts and returns should be treated, the stock cost method, and any overheads to include]
   
   Do not give financial or tax advice. If the data is insufficient, say what I need to provide before calculating that result.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.