💡 TL;DR

COGS lets SellerLegend calculate true profit by factoring in your actual product costs. You define the cost of one unit of a product over time. COGS data is then applied to sales reports, profit dashboards, and P&L statements — all with precision and time-awareness.

🔍 What Is COGS?

COGS (Cost Of Goods Sold) is the amount it costs you to get a single unit of a product ready for sale — including manufacturing, packaging, shipping, duty, labeling, etc.

It is not just the factory price. It’s the all-in landed cost per unit.

🧠 Why You Must Define COGS

Without accurate COGS:

• SellerLegend cannot calculate your real profit.

• P&L, Dashboard, and Sales reports will show inflated margins.

• You’ll lack visibility on whether a product is actually profitable after expenses.

⚙️ How SellerLegend Uses COGS

SellerLegend uses your COGS to compute:

• Gross Profit per order

• Total Profit after Amazon fees

• Profit Margins

• Profitability per product, brand, group, or marketplace

• Accurate financial dashboards and P&L reports

This is done retrospectively — if you define a cost for a past date, SL recalculates all applicable reports.

🧱 COGS in SellerLegend Is Time-Based

Unlike static systems, SellerLegend uses a period-based costing model:

• You define one or more time periods for each product.

• Each period has its own cost per unit.

• SellerLegend matches each order to the appropriate cost period based on the sale date.

📅 Example:

• Jan–May: COGS = $4.50

• June–present: COGS = $5.00
  → Orders from March use $4.50; orders from July use $5.00.

🧮 What Goes Into a Unit Cost?

Any cost associated with planning, manufacturing, shipping, packaging, marketing etc. will have an impact on COGS. The following is a non-exclusive list of the types of costs that participate in COGS.

You may define these as a single total (in Simple View) or as individual cost elements (In detailed view).

Any product charges that originate from Amazon is charged directly to your SellerCentral account, and adding them to COGS would simply double-count those costs, as COGS also participates in the P&L numbers.

For example,

• If you do use the Amazon Partner Network to buy Shipping to Amazon, these costs will be charged by Amazon directly to your SellerCentral account and will appear in your P&L automatically. Therefore, there’s no need to include them in COGS. Doing so would double the Shipping to Amazon costs, once in COGS and once in P&L.
• If you do not use the Amazon Partner Network and pay your shipping to Amazon costs yourself, then you need to include these costs in COGS.

For the same reason, all Amazon Fees (FBA and other fees) that are charged directly to your SellerCentral account need not be included in COGS.

👀 Two Ways to Enter COGS

You can also choose Simple or Detailed views when entering data:

• Simple View = Just unit cost per period.

• Detailed View = Add currency, provider, notes, units, and total paid.

→ See: Simple vs Detailed COGS Entry View

🌍 Marketplace Scope

• COGS is defined per product per marketplace.

• COGS values are in the currency of the target marketplace, unless otherwise specified (in Detailed View).

• You can propagate COGS across EU marketplaces — but not across regions (e.g., US → UK = ❌).

⚠️ What Happens If I Don’t Define COGS?

✅ Prerequisites Before You Start

To define COGS, you must:

• Ensure the product exists in your SellerLegend account.

• Choose which marketplace you want to define cost for.

• Decide between:

  • Manual entry (low number of COGS) vs. Bulk Upload

  • Simple (no granularity of cost details) vs. Detailed View

• Collect your product cost data with correct:

  • Start/End dates

  • Currency and amounts

  • Unit counts or total paid amounts

🔁 Can I Change COGS Later?

Yes! COGS is fully editable and replaceable.

• Add new cost periods as needed.

• Edit or delete old ones, even add future ones.

• SellerLegend recalculates profit reports immediately.

📚 Next Steps

• 👉 Defining COGS for a Product (Manual Entry)

• 👉 Bulk Uploading COGS via Excel

• 👉 Simple vs Detailed View Explained

• 👉 How COGS Affects Reports