Revenue Calculator

Revenue = unit price × quantity; units to hit the target = target revenue ÷ unit price; gap to target = target revenue − revenue; share of target = revenue ÷ target revenue × 100

Unit price

What one unit sells for, net of any discount, because a discounted sale brings in the discounted amount. It is also the denominator when the target is turned into units, which is why a price of zero is refused by the page rather than answered: dividing by it has no result, and a target of any size would need an infinite number of free units.

Quantity

How many units were sold, in the same unit the price is quoted for. It can be zero, and the page accepts that: no sales is a real state of a product, and it produces a revenue of zero with the gap equal to the whole target — which is a more useful answer than an error message. It is also the field to leave alone when you are asking the other direction of the same equation, how many units a target would take.

Target revenue

The figure being measured against: a budget, last year's same period, a break-even volume turned into money, or a number somebody committed to. It is a field rather than a benchmark built into the page because there is no such thing as a normal revenue for a product, and having it as an input is what lets one panel answer both what was sold and how far that is from what was wanted.

Revenue

Price times quantity, printed to two decimals. It is the gross figure: no cost of the goods, no discount, no returns, no commission. That is what makes it comparable between products and periods, and it is also what makes it a poor guide to whether anything was earned — a revenue figure on its own cannot distinguish a healthy business from one selling at a loss.

Units to hit the target

The target divided by the price: the volume that would produce the target revenue if the price held. It is the more actionable half of the calculation, because volume is usually the part of the equation a business can still change — and it comes with a warning built into the arithmetic, since the units needed rise as the price falls, and the page cannot tell you whether the extra volume is achievable.

Gap to target

Target minus revenue, so a positive figure is the shortfall still to be found and a negative one is the amount by which the target was passed. The sign is kept rather than turned into a difference because the two cases are not the same news, and a reader comparing a plan against a result wants to see which side of it they are on without doing the subtraction themselves.

Share of target

Revenue as a percentage of the target. Below 100 means the target was not reached, above means it was exceeded, and the figure is not capped in either direction: a product at 240 percent of its target is information, and a product at 0 percent is the same statement as no sales at all. Read it alongside the gap, since the percentage hides the size of the numbers and the gap does not.

Use it to turn a price and a volume into the revenue they imply, to work out what a target actually demands in units, or to check a period against a plan — the last of these being the reason both the target and the current figure are inputs. It is also the first step of anything larger: a margin calculation needs revenue before it can subtract a cost, a break-even calculation needs it before it can find the point where the profit is zero, and a profit figure is meaningless without it. One boundary is worth stating plainly, because the two are constantly confused. This page measures money coming in, not money kept. There is no cost field on it and there is deliberately not one: adding a cost would turn it into the profit page, and the two figures answer different questions — revenue says how much of the market a product is reaching, and profit says whether reaching it was worth doing. A business can grow revenue while losing money on every unit, and nothing on this panel would show it. Note also that the first two inputs define the revenue and the third is only ever used in the three comparisons against it, so changing the target never moves the revenue figure itself.

1. The default: 4,000 units at 25 against a target of 120,000

   1. Revenue: 25 × 4,000 = 100,000
   2. Units to hit the target: 120,000 ÷ 25 = 4,800
   3. Gap to target: 120,000 − 100,000 = 20,000
   4. Share of target: 100,000 ÷ 120,000 × 100 = 83.333 percent, printed as 83.33

   All four figures are the same shortfall in different units: 20,000 of revenue, 800 units, or 16.67 percent of the target. The one to act on is usually the second, because 800 units is a number somebody can be asked to sell and 20,000 is not. That is the whole reason the page prints both directions of the equation rather than only the one that was asked for.

2. Target already passed: the same sales against a target of 60,000

   1. Revenue: 25 × 4,000 = 100,000
   2. Units to hit the target: 60,000 ÷ 25 = 2,400
   3. Gap to target: 60,000 − 100,000 = −40,000
   4. Share of target: 100,000 ÷ 60,000 × 100 = 166.667 percent, printed as 166.67

   Nothing about the sales changed between this example and the first one; only the target did. That is what the target field is for, and it is also why the gap keeps its sign: a negative gap is a target that was passed by 40,000, which is the opposite piece of news from a shortfall of the same size. The percentage says the same thing and the gap says it in money, and the two are worth reading together.

3. Awkward numbers: 1,234 units at 99.99

   1. Revenue: 99.99 × 1,234 = 123,387.66
   2. Units to hit the target: 150,000 ÷ 99.99 = 1,500.15 units
   3. Gap to target: 150,000 − 123,387.66 = 26,612.34
   4. Share of target: 123,387.66 ÷ 150,000 × 100 = 82.258 percent, printed as 82.26

   The units figure is a decimal, which is the honest thing for it to be: a target that is not an exact multiple of the price needs a fraction of a unit, and rounding it up to 1,501 would quietly overstate what the target requires. Read it as a planning figure rather than a shopping list — the point of the number is the size of the gap, not its last two decimals.

4. Exactly on target: 300 units at 33.33

   1. Revenue: 33.33 × 300 = 9,999
   2. Units to hit the target: 9,999 ÷ 33.33 = 300
   3. Gap to target: 9,999 − 9,999 = 0
   4. Share of target: 9,999 ÷ 9,999 × 100 = 100 percent

   A zero gap and a hundred percent are worth showing rather than treating as a special case: the target was met exactly, and the units figure reproducing the quantity sold is the arithmetic confirmation of it. Cases like this are also a reminder that the page does not round the revenue to something tidier — 9,999 is what the multiplication gives, and printing 10,000 would be inventing a figure.

5. Nothing sold: the target with a quantity of zero

   1. Revenue: 4 × 0 = 0
   2. Units to hit the target: 5,000 ÷ 4 = 1,250
   3. Gap to target: 5,000 − 0 = 5,000
   4. Share of target: 0 ÷ 5,000 × 100 = 0 percent

   A quantity of zero is accepted rather than rejected, and this is the case that shows why: the useful output is not the revenue, which is obviously nothing, but the 1,250 units the target requires. The page refuses a price of zero because dividing by it has no answer, and accepts a quantity of zero because it does — that distinction is the whole of the validation here.

This is a gross measure and it is deliberately blind to everything that comes out of the money before anybody keeps any of it. Costs are the largest omission: no cost of goods, no overhead, no commission, no payment processing, no returns and no allowances, so a revenue figure can rise while the business loses money on every unit sold. Timing is the second: a sale recorded when the order is placed and the same sale recorded when the customer pays are two different figures, and this page does not know which convention the quantity came from. Discounts and rebates are the third, and they are the reason this page has no discount field — the price entered here should already be the price actually received, and a list price entered in its place will overstate revenue by the whole of the discount. Nothing here is a forecast either: it multiplies out what was sold or what is assumed to be sold, and it says nothing about whether that volume is achievable, which is the question the units figure usually provokes. Finally, revenue is not a market share and not a measure of profit, profitability or cash, all of which need at least one more input than this page has.

Is revenue the same as profit?

No, and the difference is everything that is subtracted between them. Revenue is the total taken in from selling goods and services; profit is what is left of it after the costs of producing what was sold. That is why this page has no cost field at all — adding one would make it a profit calculation, and the two figures answer different questions. A business can report growing revenue for a year while losing money on every unit, and the revenue figure will not show it.

Which price should I enter?

The price actually received per unit, after any discount, rebate or allowance that reduced it. Entering a list price overstates revenue by the whole of the discount, and the error is invisible afterwards because nothing on the panel refers back to a list price. If the sales were made at more than one price, the figure to use is the average received per unit — total receipts divided by units sold — which is what makes the multiplication come out at the right total.

What does the units figure tell me that the revenue does not?

How much volume the target still requires, in the unit somebody would actually have to sell. A gap of 20,000 in revenue is a fact about the past; 800 units is a task. The conversion is also where a plan most often falls apart, because the units needed rise whenever the price falls, and a target that looked reachable at one price can require more volume than the market has. The page performs the division and leaves that judgement to you.

Why is the gap negative when the target was beaten?

Because the gap is calculated as target minus revenue, which makes the sign carry the news: positive means the target has not been reached, negative means it has been passed by that amount. Folding it into an absolute difference would lose the distinction and force a reader to compare two numbers to find out which way round it is. The percentage beside it gives the same information on a different scale, and reading the two together is how you tell a small shortfall on a large target from a large one on a small target.

Can the quantity be zero?

Yes, and the page answers rather than complaining. A product with no sales this period has a revenue of zero and a gap equal to the entire target, and the units figure still tells you what the target would need. The only input the page refuses is a price of zero, because the target has to be divided by it to produce the units and that division has no answer — every target would need an infinite number of free units. That is the reason the validation is where it is.

How does this differ from the sales calculator?

The sales page takes a discount and works out the net price, the revenue, the cost and the gross profit; this page has no discount and no cost and stops at the money coming in. They are the two halves of one measurement — this one is gross, the other is what is left after the discount is taken off — and for a product sold at list price the two agree exactly. If the figure you have is a list price and the sales were discounted, the sales page is the one that will give you the right total.

• Revenue — the glossary definition of the total amount of money, or gross income, generated from selling goods and services, and the price of a widget multiplied by the number of widgets sold — Investor.gov, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (United States)
• Profit — the glossary definition of revenue minus cost, which is the figure this page deliberately stops short of measuring — Investor.gov, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (United States)
• Publication 334 (2025), Tax Guide for Small Business — how gross receipts from a business are worked out and reported, which is the tax counterpart of the revenue figure calculated here — Internal Revenue Service (United States)