Which Product Category Makes You the Most Money?
How to use the AskBiz Sector filter and Sales Report to compare profitability across product categories — and decide where to expand, cut, or reprice.
Key Takeaways
- The Sector filter on Reports lets you view Revenue, Margin, and Gross Profit for each product category separately.
- High-revenue categories with low margins need repricing; low-revenue categories with high margins need more stock and visibility.
- Category-level analysis is the fastest way to decide where to expand your product range.
- Assign every product a sector in Inventory to make category reporting accurate and useful.
Category reporting: the view most owners miss
Looking at total business revenue is like looking at your business from 1,000 feet — you can see the shape but not the detail. Category-level reporting zooms in to show which product types generate the most revenue and the highest margins. In a multi-category business (grocery, beauty, household), different categories can have wildly different margins — and the mix of what sells determines your overall profitability. AskBiz's Sector filter gives you this view in seconds.
Step 1 — Set the Sector filter and read each category
Go to Operations > Reports. Use the Sector dropdown at the top to select one category at a time: Retail, Restaurant, Salon, Repair, Factory. For each sector, note the Revenue, Gross Profit, and Margin. Keep a simple table: Category | Revenue | Margin %. Five minutes of note-taking gives you the full category breakdown for the past 30 days. This is your product portfolio view.
Interpreting the category table
Four scenarios require action: (1) High Revenue, High Margin — this is your star category. Invest in it: more stock, more variety, more shelf space. (2) High Revenue, Low Margin — your volume driver with thin profits. Reprice to improve margin or negotiate better supplier terms. (3) Low Revenue, High Margin — hidden gem. These products are profitable but underexposed. Move them to better shelf positions and add them to promotions. (4) Low Revenue, Low Margin — candidates for removal. These categories drain cash and space without compensating returns.
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See this in action for your business
AskBiz tracks these metrics automatically — just connect your data and start asking questions.
Start for free →Making category expansion decisions
When considering whether to add a new product category, look at categories that already show High Margin in your current range. If your beauty products deliver 52% margin and your grocery products deliver 22%, adding more beauty SKUs is a better capital allocation decision than expanding grocery. AskBiz category data replaces gut feel with evidence when making these expansion decisions.
Using category data with suppliers
When a supplier pitches you on adding their products, ask yourself: what category is this? What margin does that category currently deliver in my business? If their product is in a category that consistently underperforms in your store, you have objective grounds for either declining or negotiating better terms. This is a significant negotiating advantage that most small retailers don't use.
Keeping your sector assignments accurate
Category analysis is only as good as your product sector assignments. Go to Operations > Inventory and filter by 'All Sectors'. The banner at the top shows how many products have no sector tag (in this example, 4 items). Tag all untagged products immediately — without a sector assignment, a product's sales don't appear in any category filter and your category analysis is incomplete. Run a quarterly audit to ensure new products added via 'Scan to add' have been correctly categorised.