How to Import your Cost of Goods Sold

Understanding and properly configuring your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is crucial for accurately assessing your brand's profitability and calculating LTV. There are three ways to add your COGS into RetentionX:

1. Many eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify, allow you to input the "cost per item" directly in their interface. Once the COGS are added, we automatically import them and apply them to all historical data - this is the default setting of your RetentionX account. So, once all your COGS are entered into your store data (or your custom data feed), no further action is required.

2. You can configure the COGS in your RetentionX account and set them as a fixed percentage of the net selling price (excluding sales tax) of your products. This method is particularly useful if your COGS is consistently proportional to your selling price.

3. The COGS import provides an easy way to transfer COGS directly into RetentionX via CSV upload, no matter what option is selected in your settings - the importer overrides it.

Use Cases

Uploading COGS via CSV file provides the following benefits:

• There is no way to record the development of your COGS in the eCommerce platforms, only the current value. With the help of our importer, you can factor in any changes, such as economies of scale, to determine the true LTV over time.
• If you do not have the COGS stored in your eCommerce platform or only partially, the COGS import offers an easy way to transfer this information directly to RetentionX.

How to Prepare The Import

To import the COGS, please prepare the attached import file including the following data:

Please keep the following into account:

• The COGS are defined as all cost that are involved with getting an item into your inventory and prepared for sale. Please find all the details here.
• Please add one line per SKU, with the related COGS value and an effective date. 
  Tip: To ensure to upload the COGS for all your variants, easily download a list of all your SKUs and Product Identifiers via our All Variants report.
• If the COGS has changed for a product over time, simply add multiple lines for one product with adjusted COGS and effective date.
• The first effective date should correspond to the first order date of a product.

How it Works

The first step is to prepare all your data. Once this is done, it is time to perform the import. Our team will take over this task for you! Thus, please provide your import file to your Account Manager or send it to success@retentionx.com.

The import will have the following effects:

• Needless to say, all historical data will be updated based on the imported COGS.
• If you have (partial) COGS stored in your e-commerce platform, these will be overwritten by the import - also for future calculations.
• The uploaded COGS are set up as rules until a posterior Effective Date is registered for that same SKU. This means that every future order will also be affected by the imported COGS.
• If any COGS change, you just need to add a new line with the corresponding data in the import file and we will update it.

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