Find every variant with a missing cost or a low margin

Why missing matters

In a profit report, a product with no cost is a product that appears to be all profit, or is left out. Either way the totals are wrong, and the more of your catalog is uncosted, the less the report means. New variants are the usual cause: a colour is added, the cost field is skipped, and nobody notices.

The filters

The Costs page lists every variant with its price, unit cost, added costs, total cost and margin. You can filter it by issue:

• No unit cost: nothing has been recorded, from any source.
• Low margin: the margin is under your threshold but not negative.
• Negative margin: the variant costs more than it sells for.
• No SKU: the variant cannot be matched by a CSV import.

You can also show only bundles or only single items, search by product, variant or SKU, and sort by price, cost or margin. Variants without a figure sort last, so those with a number come first in either direction.

How the margin is worked out

margin = (price − total cost) ÷ price

Total cost is the unit cost plus every added cost. For the linen throw: ($68.00 − $27.42) ÷ $68.00 = 59.7%.

A variant with no unit cost has no margin. So does a variant with a price of zero.

Bundles

A bundle is missing its cost when any one of its components is. It shows under the same filter, and its page says which situation it is in.

Fixing what you find

• Open a variant and add its cost by hand.
• Filter to “No unit cost”, note the SKUs and import them by CSV.
• Set a cost on the product so every variant without its own inherits it.