NOTE: This help article describes how to use HelloProfit's Cost Editor to update your Unit Costs or Ship Costs, for any historical or future timeframe.
When your Unit Costs or Ship Costs change over time, you can reflect those changes in HelloProfit to keep your COGS accurate and up-to-date. If you've kept previous company records of COGS changes in the past, you can also go back and edit those timeframes. The profitability on the dashboards and tools around HelloProfit will likewise update for those timeframes.
NOTE: Changes made take about an hour to propagate throughout the HelloProfit toolset.
Getting Started in the Cost Editor
Head to your Product Fees page. Locate the ASIN you'd like to edit. Ensure you select the SKU and Marketplace intended, as a single ASIN can have multiple SKU offers attached, and further, those SKUs can be offered in multiple marketplaces. You may use the orange "Smart Search" button at top right of Product Fees page to quickly locate your target item.
Then, click on the associated Unit Cost or Ship Cost in the corresponding column on the Product Fees page. This will bring up the Cost Editor where you may create new entries, or edit existing ones like this:
Note about the series of entries:
Start Dates are the next calendar day after the End Date of the entry below.
There are no overlapping Dates.
There are no Date gaps.
There are no Costs of $0.00.
The entry driving COGS of the chronologically last timeframe can end with ∞ denoting a "go-forward" cost, which includes the current timeframe (today) as well as future.
Editing Existing Entries
Dates: Click on a Start Date or End Date. Key in the date desired as MM/DD/YYYY. If you change an ∞ symbol to a hard date, that cannot be undone. To regenerate the ∞ entry, re-create the entry by adding a new entry as described below (and delete the original entry, to avoid overlapping dates). The default End Date of the new entry added will be ∞ if no End Date is provided.
Costs: Enter Value ONLY. Do NOT include currency symbols. The currency used is your default merchant currency. These values are then converted to various marketplace currencies at time of sale for sales made in those marketplaces. (Default merchant currency editable in settings on your Merchant Dashboard).
Adding New Entries
To create a new entry, use the form field just above the existing entries. The entry is generated only after the appropriate dates and unit cost are entered, and the "+" sign at the far right of the form is clicked. If you are trying to create an entry containing formatting errors, an error will be shown which must be corrected before you can click the "+" to add the record.
Deleting Entries
To delete the entry entirely, simply click on the trash can icon on the row you need to delete. This action cannot be undone.
Also note: deleting an entry will not zero out the Costs associated with historical orders previously calculated with that deleted entry. If you need to actually zero out costs for a timeframe, you may add an entry for that timeframe with $0.00 costs. But normally zeroing costs is not what is practically needed. Rather, an edit or replacement row with actual costs better suits most needs.
Fixing Errors
If your list of historical Unit Cost or Ship Cost records contain other errors, such as overlapping dates, date gaps, entries with $0.00 costs, or if there is no entry driving costs for sales made today, there will be error alert messages displayed at the very bottom of the Editor. (If you have more rows on the Editor than fit on your screen, you may need to scroll to the bottom to view error messages).
Additionally, each error type is color coded, and cells with erroneous entries will be highlighted in the corresponding error type color. If more than one error exists in a cell, the cell with be outlined in the color of the second error. (Heaven help you if you make three or more errors in a single cell).
There are several errors you may encounter using the Cost Editor, as shown here:
There is no date/amount for the current timeframe. This means for sales made on today's date for example, no cost has been defined. Solution: either add a new record applicable for sales in the current timeframe, or edit an existing entry to accommodate current sales.
Some dates overlap. The Editor accepts entries even if they are overlapping. The most recent edit you made will be the entry respected by the system. However the alert will point out overlapping entries so you can correct the issue and know exactly which value will be applied.
There are some date gaps. A set of entries which fails to cover all timeframes will be addressed by this error.
Some costs set to zero. Unless you truly have zero COGS associated with units in a timeframe, or have no shipping costs, ensure all rows have a positive value in the Cost column.
Once all edits have been made for your Unit or Ship costs, you can close out of the Cost Editor by clicking the "x" in the top right corner of the Editor window, or clicking anywhere else outside the Editor window. Your edits are staged for processing by the system at the time the entries are made. Changes made take about an hour to propagate throughout the HelloProfit toolset.
At this time there is no provision for bulk editing historical COGS via upload.
Please reach out if you need anything – we're here to help!