Sales tracker for a student business: a 40-minute spreadsheet activity
What it is: a grades 6–8 activity where students enter one week of made-up sales for a pretend snack cart into a table or spreadsheet, calculate revenue, costs and profit for each day, and decide what the owner should change. Students practice formulas and see how records help a business decide.
Time: about 40 minutes. Grade: 6th to 8th grade.
Materials: a data card for each team with 5 days of sales (items sold, price, cost per item, a note such as "rainy" or "field day"), computers with any spreadsheet program, or paper tables and calculators.
- Show the columns: day, items sold, price, revenue, cost per item, total cost, profit. Model day 1 together.
- Teams enter the five days. In a spreadsheet, they write formulas such as revenue = items sold x price.
- Teams add a weekly total for revenue, costs and profit.
- Teams make a simple bar chart of profit by day.
- Teams read the notes column. Ask: "Why did field day sell so much? Why was Tuesday low?"
- Each team writes two recommendations for the owner, each backed by a number from the table.
Differentiation: students who need support use a table with revenue already filled in. Students who are ready add a column for profit margin (profit divided by revenue) as a percent. English learners can use a glossary card with revenue, cost, profit and formula.
Quick check: "On Monday the cart sold 30 items at $2 with a cost of 80 cents each. What was the profit?" ($36.)
More on UpOnly Learning (linked below): Money Meets Business explains profit, small businesses and how businesses raise money, with sources.
Save this activity to your library so it is ready when you need it.
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About this resource
- Shared by
- @UpOnlyLearning · Curriculum team
- Posted
- Oct 31, 2026
- Type
- Lesson plan
- Grade
- Grades 6–8
- Subject
- Business
- Language
- English
- License
- Free for classroom, co-op and tutoring use. Please don't resell.