Without cost per item, Magistry only sees revenue. A SKU doing €5,000 a month looks like a winner — until you learn it costs €4,600 to fulfill. Every margin-sensitive judgment in the system needs to know what things cost, which is why importing costs is the highest-leverage twenty minutes of your setup.
Two ways to import
- Shopify cost-per-item — if you maintain costs in Shopify, they sync directly. This is the cleanest path because the data stays current at the source.
- CSV upload — a SKU-to-cost mapping for stores that keep costs in a spreadsheet or ERP export. The import preview shows exactly which SKUs match before anything is written.
Keeping costs current
Costs drift — suppliers reprice, shipping changes, exchange rates move. Supplier Sentinel keeps costs current after the initial import and flags stock risk alongside: a supplier whose prices are climbing or whose availability is wobbling shows up before it becomes a margin surprise or a stockout.
What costs unlock
- The profit panel — contribution margin per SKU, per order, per channel, instead of revenue vanity numbers.
- Margin-aware discounts — discount proposals respect a 1.8× cost floor, so no promotion can price a product into a loss.
- POAS bidding — ad spend optimized on profit on ad spend, not return on ad spend. Two SKUs with equal ROAS and different margins get different bids, correctly.
- Evidence tiers — imported and confirmed costs are Tier A, which is what unlocks the discount action at all. Estimated costs stay Tier B, unknown costs Tier C, and both block anything margin-sensitive.
Revenue tells you what customers paid. Cost tells you whether you should be glad they did. The agents need both.