Hi dig,
I don't think you are going to end up with a precise figure. What you can do is get an approximation by stripping out things that are clearly irrelevant.
So taxes, interest, R&D - these have no bearing.
You are trying to get close to a consistent measure of the costs of sales. Some of the costs of sales are things like shrink wrap. These vary according to volume. Some of the costs of sales are things like salaries which do not necessarily correlate with volume. The latter are listed inside S,G&A costs.
This gives you a dirty measure of the total cost side of sales. It includes some garbage which comes from things like admin costs. But admin costs tend not to be terrifically eccentric quarter over quarter.
So the cost side of your ratio may be dirty, but it is also pretty consistent.
On the sales side, you need to use a figure which isn't normalised. So the orders number is better than the accrued number. And to acknowledge the peaks created by major orders, it is best to have a sales figure both with and without them.
The ratio drops out of the comparison of sales and costs.
If you can get the numbers for sales people on a quarterly basis, you can also establish a clean number for average sales orders per person.
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