How to Track Your Business and Actually Make a Profit

A business can be busy, popular, and still be losing money. It happens more often than most owners realise, because "money in my account" and "profit" feel like the same thing. They are not. Moniepoint's 2025 Informal Economy Report, built from data across 5 million Nigerian businesses and on-the-ground surveys, found that 65% of informal businesses grew their revenue over the past year, but only 47% actually saw higher profit. For nearly a fifth of businesses, more sales did not mean more money kept.

Cash in your account is not profit

If a customer pays you 200,000 naira today, that is cash. It is not profit until you subtract what it cost you to deliver: materials, transport, staff time, rent, data, everything. Many business owners spend against the cash balance directly, restocking, paying personal bills, taking on new orders, without ever calculating what was actually left over after costs.

This is how a business can look busy for months and then suddenly be unable to pay a supplier. The money was moving, but it was never tracked closely enough to know how much of it was truly earnings versus how much was already spoken for.

Separate your money from the business's money

Mixing personal and business funds is one of the most cited reasons small businesses in Nigeria fail. When both live in the same account, it becomes almost impossible to answer a simple question: is the business actually making money, or am I just moving cash around?

• Use a separate account or wallet for business income and expenses, even if the business is small or informal.
• Pay yourself a defined amount, rather than pulling money out whenever a need comes up. Treat it like a salary, not a shared pool.
• If you must borrow from the business for a personal expense, log it as a loan, not as an expense, so it does not distort your numbers.

Track three things, not fifty

You do not need complicated spreadsheets or an accounting degree. You need three numbers, tracked consistently.

• Income. Every sale, invoice, or payment received, logged as it happens, not reconstructed from memory at month end.
• Expenses. Every cost tied to running the business, materials, transport, packaging, rent, staff, sorted by category so you can see where money actually goes.
• Stock. What you have, what has sold, and what is quietly expiring or gathering dust. Unsold or spoiled stock is lost profit that never shows up as a clean number until you count it.

Once these three are tracked, profit becomes a simple subtraction: income minus expenses minus the cost of stock used, rather than a guess based on how full your account looks.

Source: Moniepoint 2025 Informal Economy Report.

Price to cover more than what you paid

A common mistake is pricing based only on the cost of goods, forgetting the cost of running the business around them. If a product costs 5,000 naira and you sell it for 6,000, that 1,000 naira has to cover transport, packaging, your time, and a margin left over as actual profit. Sold this way, many businesses are effectively working for free once every cost is accounted for.

Build a small buffer into every price for overhead you do not think about daily: data, transport, occasional waste, and your own time. If that buffer is not in the price, it comes out of your profit instead, quietly, every single sale.

Review on a schedule, not when something feels wrong

Most business owners only check their numbers closely when something already feels off, cash is tight, a supplier is chasing them, or a big bill is due. By then, the problem has usually been building for weeks.

A short weekly review, ten minutes to look at income, expenses, and what is still owed to you, catches problems while they are still small. Pair that with a monthly look at overall profit, and you will know where the business actually stands long before it becomes an emergency.