In this article:

What is Cost of Goods?
How to set up COGS in TrueProfit
Editing COGS for a product or variant
Adding and Managing Historical COGS

What is Cost of Goods?

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) or Product Cost is basically the total amount of money you spend acquiring the products you sell online. It's like your "wholesale" price, not including things like marketing, overhead, or shipping.

For example, if you sell a t-shirt for $20 and it cost you $8 to buy from a supplier, your COGS for that t-shirt is $8.

Tracking COGS accurately helps you calculate your profit margin: Remember, your profit is the difference between your selling price and your COGS. Understanding your COGS helps you set competitive prices and ensure you're actually making money on each sale.

How to set up COGS in TrueProfit

If you've just installed TrueProfit to your Shopify store, there are 3 ways the app can get and calculate the cost of goods for your store.

1. TrueProfit automatically syncs Cost per item from your Shopify account upon installing.

If you have entered the Cost per item for all variants in your store, then review the imported costs again in TrueProfit to ensure accuracy.

2. Upload COGS in bulk with a .csv file

This is a fast and easy way to import your existing COGS of all products in your store at once. Here's how to import your COGS file in TrueProfit:
Go to the Cost of Good page
Click Export to download a .csv file of all synced products from your Shopify store


The file will look similar to the image below, find the COGS column and fill in the product cost for each product and variant accordingly

Important notes:

Do not make edits in the Sale price column, TrueProfit automatically syncs your product's sale price from Shopify.
The fixed decimal format in the CSV is separated by a dot, not a comma. If you make changes in the COGS or Handling Fee values, make sure to use a dot for decimal.
Do not add or change the order of the columns and rows so that our app can recognize the correct data when you import the file back.4. Once done, save your file in the .csv format and import it by clicking Import


In the app, click Import then choose the CSV file you've saved in step 2 to import it to TrueProfit



To check the progress of importing and updating your product cost, click on the notification bell.

3. Set up COGS manually

You can add COGS for each product (or variant) to ensure 100% accuracy in cost calculations. After the app has finished importing your product data from Shopify, go to the Cost of Good page to edit COGS for each product manually.

If a product has multiple variants, you can add one Average value for all variants or add COGS separately by variants.



Once you've manually made changed to the COGS in TrueProfit, the app will stop syncing data from Shopify for that product. When a COGS value of a product has been edited, it will be displayed in yellow text.

Editing COGS for a product or variant

When you click on the edit icon, you can add or change the COGS for a product or variant in your store. In this modal, there are two main settings for COGS:
Pricing mode: Fixed cost or Quantity-based cost
Fixed cost: Set a fixed COGS for a product. TrueProfit also has the Historical COGS feature to help you manage changes in product costs over time.
Quantity-based cost: Set up different COGS ranges for product batches by unit count. Read more about this feature below.
Apply to specific variants or count all variants as a single product
If you choose to apply to "Specific variants", you can edit the COGS and Historical COGS for each variant in the product's dropdown.
If you choose "This product, all variants included", you won't be able to edit the COGS and Historical COGS for the variants of this product.

Apply new costs to past orders

After you've edited COGS, Selling Price, or Handling Fees for a product, the app will save your setting to apply to future orders only. If you want to apply new costs to orders in the past as well, you'll need to Recalculate past orders. There're two ways to do it:

To apply and recalculate COGS for all orders in the past for a product only, click the Re-calculate product's past orders button



To apply and recalculate COGS for all orders generated in the past for the entire store, click the Re-calculate past orders button at the bottom of the page

Adding and Managing Historical COGS

Sometimes it's crucial for one product to have different COGS over different date ranges. Your product costs might have increased or decreased due to negotiation or supplier's promotion, and you should be able to track the changes in product in different time range.

Managing Historical COGS will depend on how you apply the product COGS: To specific variants or count all variants as a single product.




Click Add/edit or Manage History to see the Historical COGS of that variant/product. If you haven't made any changes, the COGS will be applied to the entire selling history of your product.


If you want to add a new COGS for the selected product, click Add new COGS, enter a cost value and choose the Start date. By default, when you add new COGS, the old values will be applied to past selling period of the product.
Note: If there is an overlap in time range, newly added time ranges will override previously added ones.

Quantity-based COGS settings

Please refer to this article on how to set Quantity-based COGS for your products or variants: click HERE



You can also follow this video tutorial to get an overview of setting COGS in TrueProfit

Updated on: 16/05/2024