The Refills Report: See Profit on Every Gas Batch You Buy

The pain: "the money came in, but did the refill pay?"

A gas refill is the biggest single purchase most sellers make, again and again. ₦300,000 here, ₦575,000 there, month after month. And yet almost no gas seller can answer this simple question: on the refill I bought on the 4th, after everything sold and everything leaked, how much did I actually make?

The usual records cannot answer it because they mix everything together. Sales from three different refills blend into one revenue stream. Costs are averaged or guessed. Shortages vanish. So sellers fall back on feel: "this month was okay" or "since the price jumped, things have been tight." Feel is not enough when a single refill decision moves half a million naira.

What the Refills report is

The Refills report is one of the most distinctive screens in Gazeloft's Gas space, available in the app, on the web dashboard, and through the API. It shows one row per refill batch, and each row carries that batch's complete story:

• The batch itself: date, supplier, kg bought and exact total cost.
• Revenue: the money collected from every kg sold out of this specific batch, matched by FIFO.
• Net profit: that revenue minus the true cost of the kg sold from this batch, using the frozen costs recorded at each sale.
• Shortage: any missing kg found in stocktakes and pinned to this batch, with their full cost, shown on the row but kept out of the net selling figure so both stay honest.
• Remaining kg if the batch is still open.

Because costs are frozen at the moment of each sale and shortages are pinned to their batch, these rows never shift under your feet. A closed batch is a finished chapter: this is what it cost, this is what it earned, this is what leaked. Full stop.

Step by step: reading the report in the app

1. Open the Refills report from your Gas space reports.
2. Find the batch you care about. Rows are listed per refill, so the ₦575,000 delivery from the 4th is one specific row, not a blur.
3. Read across the row: kg bought, cost, revenue so far, net so far, shortage, remaining kg. An open batch updates as sales continue; a fully sold batch is final.
4. Compare batches down the column. This is where insight lives. Is net profit per batch rising or falling? Did the batch from the new depot outperform the old one? Did shortages spike on one delivery?
5. Act on what you see. Falling net per batch with a flat selling price means the depot squeeze is reaching you: adjust prices. A shortage spike on one batch means investigate that delivery or that period.

Step by step: on the web dashboard

At gazeloft.com the Refills report really shines, because the wide screen shows many batches at once with their revenue, net and shortage columns aligned. Month-end review takes minutes: scan the net column for the trend, scan the shortage column for anomalies, and cross-check any surprising batch against its expenses and stocktakes. On the Business plan you can also export PDF reports for a partner, a cooperative or a loan application, turning your batch history into evidence.

A worked example: two refills, two verdicts

Emeka runs a gas station in Port Harcourt, selling at ₦1,450 per kg. Here are two consecutive rows from his Refills report.

Batch A, bought March 3rd: 500kg at ₦1,150 = ₦575,000.

• Sold: all 495kg that reached customers, revenue ₦717,750.
• Cost of kg sold: 495 x ₦1,150 = ₦569,250.
• Net profit: ₦148,500. (₦717,750 minus ₦569,250, then adjusted for the exact per-sale records; Gazeloft does this precisely from the frozen costs.)
• Shortage: 5kg found at stocktake, stock loss ₦5,750 pinned to this batch, displayed separately.
• Verdict: a healthy batch. Roughly ₦300 of margin per kg sold, and a shortage of one percent, within normal range.

Batch B, bought March 24th, after a depot price jump: 500kg at ₦1,310 = ₦655,000. Emeka kept selling at ₦1,450.

• Sold: 490kg, revenue ₦710,500.
• Cost of kg sold: 490 x ₦1,310 = ₦641,900.
• Net profit: ₦68,600.
• Shortage: 10kg, stock loss ₦13,100, pinned here.
• Verdict: trouble. Same tank, same customers, same effort, but net per batch fell by more than half, from ₦148,500 to ₦68,600, and the shortage doubled.

Without the Refills report, March would have looked like one lump: about ₦1.43m revenue, decent activity, profit "a bit lower, probably the fuel price." With the report, Emeka sees precisely that Batch B's margin per kg collapsed from ₦300 to ₦140. He raises his price to ₦1,550 before buying Batch C, and he schedules an extra stocktake to chase the doubled shortage. Two specific decisions, both made a month earlier than feel would have allowed.

Turning the report into a monthly habit

The Refills report rewards a simple ritual. Once a month, look at three things:

1. Net per batch, down the column. This is your margin trend, cleaner than any monthly total because batch boundaries follow your real buying.
2. Shortage per batch. Your loss trend, pinned to when it happened.
3. Cost per kg versus your selling price. The gap between them is your future margin; when the gap narrows on a new batch, reprice before the batch sells out, not after.

Ten minutes, once a month, and you know more about your business than most sellers learn in a year.

Tips and pitfalls

• One delivery, one refill entry. The report is only as granular as your entries. Merging deliveries merges their stories.
• Record supplier on each refill. Comparing net profit by supplier over several batches tells you which depot relationship is actually worth keeping.
• Do not judge an open batch too early. A batch that is 20 percent sold shows only 20 percent of its revenue. Compare closed batches with closed batches.
• Remember what net does not include. Batch net is revenue minus cost of gas sold. Your rent, wages and transport live in expenses (Article 7). A batch can look profitable while the station overall struggles, so read the report beside the dashboard, not instead of it.
• Use the API if you are technical. The Refills data is available programmatically, so a spreadsheet lover or a developer can pull batch rows into their own analysis.

Every refill deserves a verdict

You would never lend a friend ₦575,000 without asking how it went. Your refills deserve the same question, and the Refills report answers it, batch by batch, in one honest row each. Free to start, no card needed. Stop guessing. Start seeing, at gazeloft.com.