OTTO Partner Connect (OPC) gives you plenty of figures on your OTTO business: revenue, orders, returns, service rates, advertising data and billing statements. For the question of what an item earns after all costs, however, it lacks inputs that OTTO cannot have at all. This article goes through the KPIs one by one: where they come from in OPC, what they lack and how you take the calculation further.
Login and the areas of the portal are covered in the guide OTTO Partner Connect: functions and limits.
In short
OPC shows what runs through OTTO: sales, returns, fees, advertising costs, service rates. OTTO does not know your purchase prices, your own shipping costs or your return costs. You therefore calculate the contribution margin per item yourself by adding these costs and allocating advertising to the item.
These KPIs are shown in OTTO Partner Connect
According to OTTO, in OPC you will find "sales and other relevant key figures for managing your business" (translated). According to OTTO's onboarding guide, the analytics module consists of an overview and five areas: SLA rates, Controlling, Customer behaviour, Product data analysis and Logistics. The service levels OTTO measures you against are, according to OTTO, agreed in your contract.
Added to this are the billing statements in the Finance area and the reports on booked advertising. Menu names and the selection on the start page can change with updates; what your portal shows is what counts.
Contribution margin per item
Analyse OTTO sales, commissions and returns. Add your purchase prices and your own shipping costs to see the contribution margin.
KPI by KPI: data source, gap, calculation
The following sections all follow the same structure, so you can quickly see which figure you can take straight from OPC and where you have to add something yourself.
Revenue
- Source in OPC: analytics and billing statements.
- What is missing: for a profit calculation you need the net revenue of the items the customer keeps. Refunds and checkout discounts must be deducted.
- Calculate it yourself: net revenue = gross revenue ÷ (1 + VAT rate), less refunded amounts. At 19%, EUR 89.90 gross becomes net proceeds of EUR 75.55.
- In profitkonsole: the invoice amounts actually charged after checkout discounts are taken from the OTTO documents.
Orders, returns and return rate
- Source in OPC: order overview and analytics.
- What is missing: the cost of returns in euros. A rate of 20% can be harmless or expensive, depending on what outbound and return shipping cost and whether the goods can be fully resold.
- Calculate it yourself: return costs = outbound shipping that is not refunded + return shipping + loss in value of the returned goods.
- In profitkonsole: you store return shipping costs in the shipping profiles and the recovery value of returned goods per item.
Commission and base fee
- Source in OPC: billing statements in the Finance area, as PDF and CSV according to the onboarding guide.
- What is missing: the statements follow the billing cycle, not your evaluation period per item. The payout also combines proceeds, refunds and fees.
- Calculate it yourself: commission per item from the rate of its product group, with tiered commissions applied tier by tier to the gross price. The base fee of EUR 99.90 per month is not tied to any sale: it is absent from the contribution margin per item, and in the contribution margin of the period you deduct it pro rata.
- In profitkonsole: the commission is calculated per item from the product group rates, including tiers; the rates can be viewed and adjusted. The base fee is charged to the day in the contribution margin and result of the selected period, not per item.
Advertising costs and ROAS
- Source in OPC: reports on booked advertising. For Sponsored Product Ads, OTTO additionally describes a reporting interface with impressions, clicks, costs, attributed sales and ROAS per day, campaign and SKU, for the last 90 days excluding the current day.
- What is missing: ROAS knows nothing about margin. And costs arise per advertised item, not per variant.
- Calculate it yourself: allocate advertising costs to the item and day and deduct them from the contribution margin. The threshold above which an ad no longer pays for itself is the break-even ROAS and break-even ACOS. How much your revenue as a whole depends on advertising is shown by TACOS.
- In profitkonsole: SPA costs arrive daily via the OTTO interface and are distributed across the variants of an advertised item. You enter SDA budgets monthly and the amount per deal; the deals themselves are detected from your orders.
Cost of goods and shipping costs
- Source in OPC: none. As an OTTO partner you ship yourself; OTTO does not know what your parcel carrier charges or what you pay for purchasing.
- Calculate it yourself: purchase price per unit sold, shipping and packaging per parcel.
- In profitkonsole: purchase prices individually or via CSV, with the date from which a new price applies; shipping costs via shipping profiles.
Contribution margin per item
- Source in OPC: none, because the costs from the previous sections are missing.
- Calculate it yourself: net revenue minus cost of goods, commission, shipping, return costs and allocated advertising. Formula, stages and a second example are covered in the glossary entry Calculating the contribution margin.
- In profitkonsole: contribution margin per item, per product group and per brand from the imported data and your costs.
Worked example: revenue vs. profit
The example builds on the women's jacket from the article on OTTO fees: EUR 89.90 gross, tiered commission EUR 14.34 per unit. All other values are assumptions; substitute your own.
- 100 orders of one unit each per month, shipping free for the customer
- 25 returns; purchase price and commission are credited (check this in your statement)
- Purchase price EUR 30.00, own shipping EUR 4.50 per parcel, return shipping EUR 5.00
- Loss in value per return 10% of the purchase price, i.e. EUR 3.00
- Sponsored Product Ads for this item: EUR 180.00
| Line | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Net revenue of items kept | 75 × EUR 75.55 | EUR 5,666.25 |
| – Commission | 75 × EUR 14.34 | −EUR 1,075.50 |
| – Cost of goods | 75 × EUR 30.00 | −EUR 2,250.00 |
| – Shipping of all parcels | 100 × EUR 4.50 | −EUR 450.00 |
| – Return shipping | 25 × EUR 5.00 | −EUR 125.00 |
| – Loss in value on returns | 25 × EUR 3.00 | −EUR 75.00 |
| – Advertising costs SPA | assumption | −EUR 180.00 |
| Contribution margin of the item for the month | 26.7% of net revenue | EUR 1,510.75 |
| – Base fee | full calendar month, net | −EUR 99.90 |
| Contribution margin of the month after base fee | before your other fixed costs | EUR 1,410.85 |
Calculated with the rounded unit values; assumptions as above. The example looks at a single item only. The base fee is charged once a month for your OTTO account, not per item; the last two rows therefore only hold if the jacket is your only OTTO item.
Before returns and advertising, each jacket sold leaves EUR 26.71 (EUR 75.55 − EUR 14.34 − EUR 30.00 − EUR 4.50). After returns and advertising it is EUR 20.14 per unit kept (EUR 1,510.75 ÷ 75). The difference comes from the shipping of the returned parcels (EUR 112.50), return shipping, loss in value and the ads. None of these four items appears as a euro amount next to revenue in OPC.
Which KPIs are fit for decisions
From the building blocks above come the figures you can base concrete decisions on:
- Contribution margin per item (EUR): which items carry the business and which do not? The basis for pricing, purchasing and range decisions.
- Contribution margin ratio (%): contribution margin divided by net revenue. Makes items at different price points comparable. The difference from gross margin and markup is explained in the glossary entry Calculating margin.
- Return costs per item (EUR): shows whether a measure against returns is worthwhile. Approaches in the article Reducing OTTO returns.
- Contribution margin after advertising and TACOS: whether ads generate profit or buy revenue.
- Items with a negative contribution margin (count): the list that leads directly to action: review the price, renegotiate purchasing, stop advertising or delist the item.
Where profitkonsole adds to the OPC data
profitkonsole connects to your account via an app installation in OTTO Partner Connect. You do not hand over your OPC password.
Taken from OTTO
- Orders, returns and cancellations, synchronised every 30 minutes
- Invoice amounts after checkout discounts
- SPA advertising costs, daily after OTTO's end-of-day close
Calculated by profitkonsole
- Commission per item from the product group rates, including tiers
- Distribution of SPA costs across the variants of an advertised item
Added by you
- Purchase prices, individually or via CSV, with a validity date
- Shipping profiles with outbound and return shipping
- Recovery value of returned goods
- SDA budgets, amounts per deal and other expenses
The result is the contribution margin per item, product group and brand, plus a P&L view of your OTTO business. Your statement from OTTO always remains the authoritative basis for your bookkeeping.
Frequently asked questions
Aren't the OPC statistics enough for small sellers?
They are made for operations: shipping on time, processing returns and keeping service levels. They do not show which items make money after all costs. With a small range, that can be calculated well in your own spreadsheet; the building blocks are above.
How up to date are the figures in OPC?
OTTO does not publicly state a fixed refresh cycle for the analytics; check the data status of the respective view. The SPA reporting does not include the current day. In our observation, revenue attributed to ads continues to come in for several weeks; costs are fixed after a few days.
What are tiered commissions and why do they matter?
In many product groups OTTO calculates the commission in tiers: each price band has its own rate. For the women's jacket in the example that is EUR 25 × 17% + EUR 50 × 16% + EUR 14.90 × 14% = EUR 14.34. If you only apply the lowest rate, you underestimate the commission. Details and current rates in the article OTTO fees 2026.
Can I use profitkonsole alongside OPC?
Yes, profitkonsole does not replace OPC, it complements it. Orders, product maintenance, advertising bookings and customer communication stay in OPC. profitkonsole takes on the profit calculation: contribution margin, costs and advertising per item.
Conclusion
OTTO Partner Connect is the tool for operating on OTTO Market and provides the figures for it. For the question of what an item earns, you additionally need your own costs and an allocation of advertising. Whether in a spreadsheet or in a tool: the calculations above stay the same.
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Connect your OTTO account and see the contribution margin per item, per product group and per period as soon as the first data has been imported.
Sources & further reading
OTTO: OTTO Partner Connect, Billing, Sponsored Product Ads Reporting (retrieved on 17 September 2026); OTTO's onboarding guide, as of January 2024
OTTO fees: OTTO fees 2026: commissions and costs
OTTO advertising costs: OTTO advertising costs: SPA, SDA and Marketing API
OTTO returns: Reducing OTTO returns
Marketplace comparison: OTTO vs. Amazon 2026