Cost Management

Your costs are what turn revenue into real profit numbers in ProfitPeak. In ProfitPeak, costs are organized into categories such as marketing, fulfillment, and operations. Each cost can be a fixed monthly amount or a percentage of sales, and you can control who sees or edits each category. Product costs (COGS) come straight from Shopify, so you only need to set up the costs Shopify doesn't already track.

Every profit metric in ProfitPeak depends on your costs: contribution profit, net profit, CPROAS, and product-level margins. If a cost is missing, your profit looks better than it really is. If a cost is counted twice, it looks worse. A careful hour spent on setup is what makes every dashboard, Sherpa answer, and budget decision afterward something you can trust.

You set access for each role and each category separately. Each role can have Read, Write, or no access to a category. For example, you could give an agency Write access to Marketing costs while keeping your Operational and Fulfilment costs completely hidden from them.

For roles that need the full picture, like owners, admins, or finance, the Costs - All permission gives access to every category at once. You'll find these settings with your other role permissions.

Every cost line can be one of two types:

Think of it like a monthly transit pass versus a taxi fare. The pass costs the same no matter how much you travel. The taxi fare grows with every trip.

Fulfillment usually works better as a percentage. A flat historical average can break down during busy periods like BFCM, when order volume and fulfillment costs climb together. A percentage adjusts automatically.

Set up buy now, pay later fees as their own line. Options like Afterpay and Klarna often charge well above standard card rates. Add them as a separate variable cost instead of folding them into your general merchant fee, so the higher rate is reflected accurately.

Payment fees use a blended rate you provide. ProfitPeak doesn't pull the actual fee from each transaction. You enter an average percentage that reflects your mix of payment methods.

ProfitPeak reads product costs directly from the cost per item you've set for each SKU in Shopify. You don't add COGS separately in ProfitPeak. Keep your Shopify product costs accurate and up to date, and your product profitability will follow.

You have two options:

A shipping rate table. Upload a rate card that sets prices by country, postcode, and weight. This works best when your costs really do vary by location and you can keep the table up to date, for example within a single well-defined region.

A variable percentage. Use a blended percentage of sales instead. This works better when parcel weight and product mix affect cost more than location does, or when keeping a full rate table for every region isn't practical, like across the US or multiple smaller markets.

Coming soon! Soon you'll be able to apply a cost only to orders that meet a condition. For example, a 5% creator commission only on orders from a specific UTM link or discount code. Until then, contact your ProfitPeak team if you need to account for conditional costs like this.

Yes. New costs apply from the date you add them by default. If you want a cost applied to past orders too, so your historical trends are corrected, our team can backfill it up to 2 years. Just tell us the date you want it to start from when you add the cost.

ProfitPeak starts from your Shopify net sales. Discounts, promotions, shipping revenue, and tax have already been taken out of that figure, so don't add them as cost lines, or they'll be counted twice.

Refunds, returns, and chargebacks are also pulled from Shopify automatically. One thing to know: they're recorded against the date of the original order, not the date the refund was processed. That means a past day's numbers can change after the fact when a refund comes in.

Yes. Costs are set up separately for each store. If you run several regional stores, such as the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, each one needs its own cost setup. You can't currently copy a setup from one store to another.

My Shopify COGS is already correct. Do I need to do anything else for product costs?
No. ProfitPeak reads product costs directly from Shopify.

Can I set a cost that only applies to certain orders, like a creator commission?
Not yet. This is coming soon. In the meantime, contact your ProfitPeak team.

If I add a cost today, will it fix my historical data?
Only if you ask us to backfill it. We can go back up to 2 years. Otherwise, it applies from the day you add it.

Should shipping be a rate table or a percentage?
Use a rate table when location drives cost and you can keep it current. Use a percentage when weight and product mix matter more, or when you sell across many regions.

Does ProfitPeak read actual payment fees for each transaction?
No. You enter a blended rate.

Can I copy my cost setup from one store to another?
Not yet. Each store is set up individually.

Short description: Set up your costs once so every profit number in ProfitPeak is accurate.

Long description: Learn how costs work in ProfitPeak 2.0, including cost categories, permissions, fixed vs. percentage costs, shipping options, and what not to add so you don't count anything twice. Includes quick answers to the most common setup questions.