What Is COGS and How Does It Get Added to My DashboardUpdated 5 days ago

COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) is the direct cost of manufacturing or sourcing the products the store sells — the amount paid to the manufacturer or supplier for every unit before any marketing or operational cost is applied.

Without COGS in the dashboard, the profit calculation is incomplete by definition. A product that sells for a certain amount and costs half that to produce has a very different margin from a product that sells for the same amount but costs 10 percent to produce. Revenue looks identical. Profit is entirely different.

Here is how COGS gets added to the profit dashboard:

For each product, the direct cost per unit is entered into the dashboard — the landed cost including the manufacturing or wholesale price plus the cost of shipping from the supplier to storage.

The dashboard then calculates automatically:

• The gross margin per product (sale price minus COGS divided by sale price)
• The gross margin per order across all products in that order
• The total COGS across all orders in any selected time period

COGS from Shopify — Shopify allows cost per item to be entered directly in the product settings. I configure these entries as part of the service so Shopify's own built-in reports also reflect accurate gross margin data alongside the standalone profit dashboard.