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What is Cost Manager and what can I do there?
A tour of Cost Manager and where to enter each cost, from product costs and fees to monthly costs and ad spend you enter by hand.
What Cost Manager is for
Cost Manager is the page where you tell TrueROAS what your orders and your business cost you. TrueROAS takes these costs off your sales to show your profit, for example on the Dashboard and in the Ads Manager.
To open it, click Setup in the left menu, then Cost Manager. When you hover over the menu entry, it reads Track product costs so you can see the real profit. Where each page sits in the menu is explained in How do I find pages in the menu and fold it in?.
The page is titled Cost Manager, and your settings start under the heading Cost Settings.
The page from top to bottom
- Cost Settings. On a Shopify store, the green Import Costs from Shopify button sits next to this heading. See How do I import product costs from Shopify or a spreadsheet?.
- A progress box or a progress line under the heading, while costs are imported from Shopify or while TrueROAS updates the costs on your recent orders. How that update works is explained in How do I add my product costs in Cost Manager?.
- Import Cost Data, with the Upload File button for a CSV or Excel file and the Download Template link. The same article as the Shopify import explains how to import a file.
- Cost of Goods, a box that holds your default costs and your products. From top to bottom it has:
- The four cards Product Cost, Handling Fee, Shipping Cost and Processing Fee. A card reads Not set until you save a value, and a notice or a Quick Setup Recommended banner can show above the cards. See How do I add my product costs in Cost Manager?.
- Break-even ROAS, with the boxes Your break-even ROAS, From your last 30 days of orders and Count your costs from, and Your profit uses under them. See How do I set my break-even ROAS and use it instead of product costs?.
- The How are my costs calculated? button, which opens the window How your costs are calculated.
- Search Products and the product table with the columns Title, Product Cost, Handling Fee per Item, Shipping per Item and Qty. If a product you sell is not in the table, see Why is a product missing from the Cost Manager table?.
- Custom Costs, with the Add New Custom Cost button and a table with the columns Cost Name, Cost Amount and Timeframe. See How do I add monthly costs like apps, rent or payment fees?.
- Ad Spend Without an Integration, at the bottom of the page, with the Add Spend Source button and a row for each source you add. Until you add one, it reads No spend sources yet. Add one to start recording spend for channels like Taboola, native ads, or influencer campaigns. See How do I add ad spend from a platform TrueROAS can't connect to?.
Where to enter each cost
| What you pay | Where to enter it | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| What a product costs you to buy or make | Product Cost in the product table, for each product or variant, or the Product Cost card as a share of the price for every product without a cost of its own | Add product costs |
| Packing and handling | The Handling Fee card, once per order, plus Handling Fee per Item in the product table | Add product costs |
| The shipping you pay for | The Shipping Cost card, or Shipping per Item in the product table for a product that costs a different amount to ship | Add product costs |
| Payment fees, such as Stripe or PayPal | The Processing Fee card, as a percentage of each order total | Add product costs |
| Monthly costs of running your business, such as apps, rent or salaries | Custom Costs, as a Fixed Monthly Amount | Monthly costs |
| Other costs that grow with your sales | Custom Costs, as % of Revenue | Monthly costs |
| Ads on a platform TrueROAS can't connect to, such as Taboola | Ad Spend Without an Integration | Spend you enter by hand |
| Ads on a connected ad platform, such as Meta, Google Ads or TikTok | Nothing. TrueROAS loads this spend from the ad platform. | Spend and costs per Dashboard card |
| Product costs you already keep in Shopify or in a spreadsheet | Import Costs from Shopify or Import Cost Data | Import product costs |
Three things to watch:
- If you enter your payment fees as the Processing Fee, do not add them again as a % of Revenue custom cost. The warning in How do I add monthly costs like apps, rent or payment fees? explains why.
- The text under Custom Costs mentions advertising spend, but ad spend belongs under Ad Spend Without an Integration, so it shows next to the sales it brings.
- Tax, the shipping your customers pay and refunds are not costs in Cost Manager. Whether your sales include them is set in General Settings, under Reporting Settings. See Does TrueROAS include tax and shipping in my sales? and Can TrueROAS take refunds off my sales?.
Where your costs show up
- On the Dashboard, in cards such as Blended Profit, Blended POAS, Contribution Margin and Cost Breakdown, the POAS on Blended ROAS / POAS, and the profit and POAS in the channel table. Each card counts a different set of costs, as explained in Which ad spend and costs does each Dashboard card add up?.
- In the Ads Manager, in the COGS and Profit columns and the POAS in ROAS / POAS. See What do the columns in the Ads Manager mean?.
- In Order Flow, in the Cost column of each order. See What do the columns in Order Flow mean?.
- In the Profit of the Weekly summary report. See What is in the Weekly summary report?.
- In Events Manager, when you choose to send each order's profit to Meta or Google Ads instead of its value. See Can I send profit instead of order value to Meta and Google?.
- A small grey est. or Add cost next to a profit number means TrueROAS estimated your costs or found none. See How do I set my break-even ROAS and use it instead of product costs?.
Product Attribution shows no product cost or profit, even when you have entered product costs. See What do the numbers in Product Attribution mean?.
Good to know
- Everything you enter in Cost Manager is saved for the whole store, so everyone on the store sees the same costs and the same profit.
- Each store has its own costs. Cost Manager shows and changes the costs of the store selected in the store list at the top of the left menu. See How do I switch between my stores?.
- There is no save button for the whole page. Each window saves when you click its save button, and the product table and the spend you enter by hand save when you leave a field. A choice under Count your costs from saves as soon as you pick it, unless a window first asks for your break-even ROAS.
- A default cost or a product cost has no start date. When you change one, your orders of the last 90 days get the new cost, also the ones placed before your change. See How do I add my product costs in Cost Manager?.
- If your profit does not change after you update a cost, see Why don't my profit numbers change after I update my costs?.
- Team members only see Cost Manager in the menu when they have the Cost Manager permission. See What can team members see and change on the Dashboard and Ads Manager?.
- On the Basic plan, the page is locked. See Why is a page locked behind Upgrade to Pro?.
- In demo mode, Cost Manager is greyed out in the menu. See Can I try TrueROAS with demo data before I sign up?.
- Enter every amount in your store currency. See Which currency and time zone do my numbers use?.
- On a phone, the cost cards sit under each other, every window fills the screen and the product table scrolls sideways. Tap the info icon next to Handling Fee per Item or Shipping per Item to read what the column means.
- TrueROAS does not copy costs from Shopify by itself. It only does so when you click Import Costs from Shopify.
- The Processing Fee is a percentage only. There is no field for a fixed amount per payment.
- You cannot export your costs. Download Template only downloads an example file with four sample rows.
- You cannot see a history of your changes or undo one.