Storage & Space Cost Tracker Spreadsheet
This spreadsheet works out what a square metre of your floor really costs, and which lines on it do not earn their rent.
Rent, rates, heat, light, insurance and racking are usually the second biggest cost in a shop, a yard or a warehouse, and they are the only large cost that never gets charged to anything in particular. Every metre sends the same invoice whether the stock on it sold or not. This file shares the whole bill out across the floor and shows what each shelf gives back.
What is in it
- Nine linked tabs and one row per stock line, seven things typed, from Start Here through to a one-screen Overview.
- Cost Of A Metre — three answers, and why only one of them is any use.
- By Zone — how full each part of the building is, and what a stocked metre there earns.
- By Category — which shelves pay their rent and which are carried.
- Not Worth It — the lines that cost more in floor than they made in gross profit.
- A Metre Must Earn — how many times a year a metre has to turn its stock over before it has paid for itself.
Who it is for
Anywhere the floor is the constraint: a garden centre, a builders’ merchant, a farm shop, a bike shop, a self-storage site, a warehouse, a workshop. If you rent by the pallet rather than the metre, the columns work the same way.
The worked example
The worked garden centre pays for 4,000 square metres at $67.10 each, can only store on 2,320 of them at $115.69, and has stock standing on 1,880 at $142.74 — 2.13 times the number on the lease. Zones move it further: $283 a metre under the roof against $49 in the yard.
One category earns $52 a square metre and another earns $1,858, and the column that matters is what the floor eats: 13.2% of gross profit for one, 177.3% for the other. 34 lines out of 400 hold 19.2% of the floor and lose $18,282 a year without looking like a problem on any stock report. Across the whole business, 46.5% of gross profit went on the floor its stock was standing on, and a metre here breaks even at 0.88 stock turns a year.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Order on WhatsApp — $9
Orders are taken on WhatsApp: message me and I’ll send the payment details, then the files as soon as the payment is confirmed.
A look inside the file
Questions people actually ask
How do I work out what a square metre of my floor actually costs?
There are three answers and only one is any use: every metre of floor you pay for, metres you can actually store on, and metres with stock on them today. In the worked example those are $67.10, $115.69 and $142.74, and the last one is the real cost, 2.13 times the number on the lease. Aisles, tills, doorways, the staff room and the loading bay come out of the first figure; empty racking and the aisle around it come out of the second.
Is this only for warehouses, and what if we rent by the pallet?
No, it works anywhere the floor is the constraint: a garden centre, a builders' merchant, a farm shop, a bike shop, a self-storage site, a workshop. If you rent by the pallet position rather than the square metre, use pallet positions instead and every column works the same way. The file does not care what the unit is, only that you use the same one twice.
We have hundreds of lines and we do not know the split between aisles and shelving.
Group the lines: twelve categories and four hundred and fifty rows is enough, because a bay of screws is one row and you are measuring floor, not stock-keeping units. For the aisle split, pace it out once or take it off the fire plan, since half to two thirds is normal in most buildings and the answer is not sensitive to a metre either way.
Does it need Excel, or will Google Sheets do?
Either, and LibreOffice as well. It is built as .xlsx for Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and imports into Google Sheets through File then Import then Upload. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install and no subscription.
Does it hold personal data, and will it tell me what to stop selling?
No on both counts. It holds stock lines, zones and square metres with no names in it, and it is not a stock system, a planogram tool or an accounts package. It measures the floor you have and will not reorganise it for you. It will not tell you what to stop selling; it tells you what the space that sells it is costing you, which is the number the argument was missing.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes stock sitting on a floor you pay for by area. If your constraint is shaped differently — cold storage where a chilled metre costs several times an ambient one, racking counted in pallet positions with a height limit rather than a footprint, a workshop where the floor is taken by jobs in progress rather than stock, or a site where a third of the space is a yard nobody heats — I can build the same arithmetic around the way your building is actually used.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.