Description
WooCommerce tells you what you sold. It does not tell you what you earned.
Since WooCommerce 10.3 the cost of goods sold lives in the core product editor, and every order
records the cost at the moment of sale. Merchgain reads that field and answers the question the
sales report cannot: how much of this revenue is actually yours. It is a WooCommerce profit report
built on data your store already has – no import, no second place to keep costs.
It only reads. No product, no price, no order, no cost value is ever written back to your store.
What you get
- Summary cards – revenue, cost of goods, gross profit and margin for the period you pick.
- Profit per product – sortable, searchable, paginated.
- Profit per category – the same sales grouped by product category. A product that sits
in several categories counts in each of them, so category totals can add up to more than
the summary – the screen and the CSV file both say so. - Missing cost warning – how many products have no cost recorded, with links straight to
the products, and how much of your revenue that leaves uncovered. - CSV export – the current view, exactly as you see it on screen. Very large reports are
capped at 20,000 rows and the file says so on its last line, so a short file is never a
silent one – and a category export that adds up to more than the summary says why. - Foreign currency warning – orders in a currency other than your store currency are named
and left out, instead of being quietly added into one wrong total.
What makes it different
- CSV export in the free version. Not behind an upgrade.
- The missing cost warning is a feature, not an upsell. You see coverage next to every
number, so you always know how much of the report rests on real data. - Works without WooCommerce Analytics. Merchgain runs its own queries against the order
tables, so it does not require the Analytics module to be enabled. - Nothing leaves your server. No account, no external service, no telemetry, no calls home.
The report is calculated on your hosting and stays there.
How the numbers are calculated
This is a cost of goods sold report, so every number below rests on the cost recorded at the
moment of sale – not on a current price list.
Revenue is the net line total of sold items after discounts, excluding tax and shipping. Refunds
count as negative amounts in the period they were issued, not in the period of the original sale.
Orders counted by default: completed, processing and refunded.
Margin is profit divided by revenue – not markup on cost. A product bought for 60 and sold for
100 has a 40% margin here. That single distinction is what separates a profit margin report from
a sales report.
Profit and margin are calculated only on items whose cost is known. An item with no cost recorded
still counts towards revenue, but it is never treated as if it had cost zero – the report says so
instead of quietly inflating your margin.
Documentation and answers: https://merchgain.com/
From the makers of Merchlint.
Screenshots
Installation
- Install and activate the plugin. WooCommerce 10.3 or newer is required.
- Go to WooCommerce -> Settings -> Advanced -> Features and switch on “Cost of Goods Sold”.
- Fill in the cost on your products – the field is in the General tab of the product editor.
- Open “Profit & margin” in the admin menu – its own item, just below the WooCommerce block.
New orders record the product cost at the moment of sale, so the report starts filling up from the point where costs are in place.
FAQ
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How is margin calculated?
-
Profit divided by revenue. A product bought for 60 and sold for 100 gives 40 profit and a 40%
margin. This is not markup on cost, which for the same product would be 66.7%. The two get mixed
up often, so the definition is printed under the report as well.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/MARGIN/
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Where do the costs come from?
-
From the Cost of Goods Sold field built into WooCommerce 10.3 and newer. Merchgain does not store
costs of its own and does not add a second cost field to your products.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/COGS/
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Does any data leave my server?
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No. Merchgain makes no outgoing connections at all – no analytics, no licence check, no update
ping of its own. Everything is calculated by your own database and displayed in your own admin. -
What about orders placed before I filled in the costs?
-
They have no cost recorded, and Merchgain reports them as “no cost data” rather than as a cost of
zero. Their revenue still counts; they are simply left out of profit and margin, and the coverage
line tells you how much of your revenue that is.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/FILL/
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My product genuinely costs zero and it shows up as missing a cost. Why?
-
Because WooCommerce cannot tell the two apart. Saving a cost of zero – on the product or on an
order item – makes the core store nothing at all rather than a zero, so “cost of zero” and “no
cost entered” end up identical in the database. Rather than guess, Merchgain always says “no cost
data” and never “cost 0”. Free samples, giveaways and downloadable extras will therefore appear on
the missing cost list.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/ZERO/
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I issued a refund and my historical profit changed. Why?
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That is WooCommerce, not Merchgain. Creating a refund makes the core recalculate the cost of every
item on the parent order using the product’s cost as it is today. If the product cost changed in
the meantime, the stored history changes with it. Merchgain reports what is in the database; it
does not silently keep a second copy.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/REWRITE/
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Which month does a refund belong to?
-
The month the refund was issued, not the month of the original sale. A September sale refunded in
November leaves September untouched and shows as a negative amount in November. Reports of closed
months do not change behind your back.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/REFUND/
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I have orders in euros and dollars. What happens to them?
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They are left out of the report and named in a warning above the numbers. Merchgain does not
convert exchange rates, and adding several currencies into one total would produce a number that
looks right and is not.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/CURR/
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I keep my costs in WPFactory Cost of Goods. Why does Merchgain show them as missing?
-
Because those costs live in that plugin’s own meta fields, not in the WooCommerce core field.
Merchgain deliberately does not read other plugins’ data. Moving the values into the core field
is on the roadmap as an optional, preview-first import.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/OTHER/
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Does it work with High-Performance Order Storage?
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Yes, and with the classic post-based storage as well. Cost values live in the order items table,
which is the same in both layouts.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/HPOS/
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Which orders are counted?
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Completed, processing and refunded. Refunded is in the list on purpose: a full refund flips the
parent order to that status, and leaving it out would make a fully refunded order count as minus
its own value instead of zero. WooCommerce Analytics excludes only pending, failed and cancelled
by default, so this set is one status narrower – it skips on-hold.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/STAT/
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My category totals add up to more than the summary card. Why?
-
Because a product that sits in several categories is counted in each of them. A mug in both
“Kitchen” and “Gifts” adds its sales to both rows, so the rows add up to more than the store
actually sold. The alternative – picking one category and dropping the sale from the other –
would quietly understate every shared category, which is worse. The summary cards are counted
from the order items themselves, so they are never double counted. The screen says this under
the table, and a CSV export of the category view says it on the last line, with both numbers.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/CAT/
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How much history does the report cover?
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All of it. There is no date limit. Any range can be selected, including a single month from
years back; profit and margin appear wherever a cost was recorded on the sold item. -
Does it slow my store down?
-
The report runs in the admin only, never on the storefront, and results are cached for an hour.
Entering a cost in the product editor clears that cache immediately, so the numbers never wait for
a timer. For anything else that changes the figures – an order status, a refund issued elsewhere,
an import – there is a “Recalculate” button next to the export. -
Who can see the report?
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Anyone with the “view WooCommerce reports” capability, which is the same permission WooCommerce
uses for its own sales reports. A shop manager has it, and so does a bookkeeper account limited to
reports only. The report has its own item in the admin menu, “Profit & margin”, sitting just below
the WooCommerce block – not inside the WooCommerce submenu, where an account limited to reports
would never see it: that submenu needs a permission such an account does not have.Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/PERM/
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“Merchgain – Profit & Margin Reports for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
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Changelog
0.2.0
- First public release. Versions 0.1.0 and 0.1.1 were review builds submitted to the plugin
directory and were never published, so this is the first version anyone can install. The code
is the one that passed review; only the version number changed.
0.1.1
- The report no longer limits how far back it reaches. The 365-day window is gone from the
code entirely, along with the notice that explained it.
0.1.0
- First working version: summary cards, profit per product and per category, missing cost
warning, CSV export, foreign currency warning, onboarding, cached results with a
Recalculate button.