Why Profit % Sometimes Shows a *

When you run the Inventory Value tool (the "Calculate" screen that totals your wholesale cost, retail value, and profit), you may notice that a few items show a * in the Profit % column instead of a number — while every other column for that item looks normal.

That * is not an error. It means one simple thing: this item has a $0 cost, so its markup percentage can't be expressed as a meaningful number. That happens either because the item came in free (a vendor freebie, a promo, a sample) or because a wholesale cost was never entered.

The Short Version

• Profit Margin answers: "Of the sale price, how much is profit?" It can never go above 100%.
• Profit % (markup) answers: "How many times over my cost am I selling this for?" It's your profit divided by your cost — and when the cost is $0, dividing by (almost) nothing produces a huge, meaningless number.

Rather than show you a wild figure like 204,600% (or an infinity symbol), TORO shows a * — a clean signal that markup simply doesn't apply to a $0-cost item.

A Real Example

A store owner asked us about a box of Macanudo Emissary Toro:

• Cost per item: $0.00 (no wholesale cost was ever entered)
• Retail: $20.47 each
• Profit %: it was showing 204,600%

Here's what happened. Because the cost was $0, the only thing left on the "cost" side of the math was a penny of special tax. Dividing the whole $327 of profit by that penny gives you 2,046 times over — hence 204,600%. Meanwhile the Profit Margin for the same item read 100%, because if your cost is zero, then 100% of the sale price is profit. Both numbers are technically correct; the markup one is just useless when there's no real cost behind it.

That item is exactly the kind of row that now shows a *.

Why Profit % Can't Be "Capped" at 100%

It's tempting to think the percentage should just stop at 100%, the way Profit Margin does. But markup legitimately goes past 100% all the time:

• Buy a cigar for $5, sell it for $10 → that's a 100% markup.
• Buy it for $5, sell it for $15 → that's a 200% markup.
• Buy it for $5, sell it for $20 → that's a 300% markup.

None of those are wrong, so capping the number would hide honest information. The only time the figure becomes meaningless is when there's no cost at all to measure against — and that's the case the * flags for you.

What to Do About It

First, the good news: the rest of that item's numbers are still correct. Profit $ and Profit Margin are accurate — only the markup % is undefined, because there's no cost to divide by.

Then it depends on why the cost is $0:

• The item really was free (a vendor freebie, promo, or sample) — then $0 is the correct cost and there's nothing to fix. The * is just the honest way to show that markup doesn't apply. Leave it as-is.
• The cost was simply never entered — open the item, enter its wholesale cost (what you pay your vendor per stick or per box), and re-run the calculation. The * will turn into a normal percentage and your Wholesale Cost / Profit totals will get more accurate too.

The Takeaway

The * is a quick way to spot every $0-cost item in your inventory. Sort the Profit % column and the starred items group together, so you can tell at a glance which ones are genuinely free and which ones are just missing a cost you meant to enter.