Start in Profit & Loss
Open Profit & Loss, choose a form and dates, and enter costs directly. There is no setup wizard or form-enable switch. Inventory remains separate.
P&L starts fresh: previous costs and settings are not carried over. Existing saved orders supply sales, quantities, discounts, customer shipping charges, surcharges and recorded refunds.
The page has three views:
- Orders & costs: enter shipping, payment fee and other costs beside an order. Expand it to enter an item Unit cost, a Cost credit or a note. One Save saves that order's edits together.
- Products: enter a unit cost once for matching existing and future orders. A cost entered for an individual order takes priority.
- Fees & expenses: set form-wide shipping and fee costs, and separately add dated one-off expenses or credits for this form.
Blank and zero mean different things
P&L calculates profit using the costs you enter. Product, shipping, fee and other costs are optional. Costs you haven’t entered aren’t included. Blank order unit costs use matching saved defaults when available; 0 means an explicit zero cost. Blank shipping or fee totals use applicable option or payment defaults. You can add more costs whenever you want.
You can save partial information. Sales and known costs remain visible while Optional costs identifies the affected paid orders. Choose a named missing cost to go straight to that product variant, shipping option, fee default or order field. Saving a shared default fixes every matching order that uses it; View updated order returns to the original order. Review payment is a separate action for uncertain sales. Missing costs on unpaid orders do not block the paid-order total.
Enter product costs
In Products, enter Unit cost and save. The displayed sale price is for reference. Changing a product cost changes matching orders that still use it; individually entered order costs stay unchanged.
Use Search products to find a product, variant or category across the complete list; there are no product pages. Categories follow the names and order in your form. Expand a category, or use Expand all and Collapse all. Small uncategorized lists may appear directly; otherwise, open Uncategorized.
Sort within categories offers Form order, Name A–Z, Name Z–A and Missing costs first. The counts distinguish products from cost entries: each variant has its own unit cost.
Searching, sorting or collapsing a category keeps your unsaved changes only while this page is open. Use Show … unsaved cost changes to clear the search and reveal their categories. These controls do not save costs or change your form.
For an exception, expand the order and enter its item Unit cost. Check quantity and the extended amount: 5 × $10 = $50. The order's product-cost total is calculated, not a second editable amount.
Clearing an entered order unit cost, or choosing Use product cost, uses the matching saved product cost again. Zero remains a real entered cost. Removed products can keep their original identity and cost; another product with the same name does not inherit it.
Optional shipping and fee defaults
In Fees & expenses, use Shipping & fee defaults. Enter and save an actual Default unit cost for each shipping option, admin fee or surcharge. Each shipping option has its own cost, including options that have not been ordered yet. Configured payment methods appear before the first order, including methods that charge the buyer no surcharge. The shortcut in Orders & costs opens this same section.
Defaults apply to matching existing and future orders. Shipping and add-on quantities multiply the unit cost. For a payment method, choose Fixed amount or Percentage of payment, enter your cost and save once. Fixed and percentage defaults apply to recorded received payments even when the buyer pays no surcharge. Fixed costs apply once per payment; percentages are rounded per payment. A buyer surcharge is separate income; it is not automatically your cost. Refunds do not automatically return processor fees. If the saved method or payment amount is ambiguous, P&L asks you to check the fee instead of guessing. Enter an order-specific cost for exceptions. Defaults count through order costs, not as an additional dated expense. Buyer charges are already included in sales and are never automatically treated as expenses.
Expand an order to enter Cost for … for a selected option. Use default cost removes that line override. Entering a shipping or fee total replaces that group's option costs; Use option costs restores the individual costs. Order-specific costs stay unchanged when defaults change. P&L edits never change customer invoices or form prices.
Save safely
Only Save stores your costs. Not saved means an edit is still only in this open page. P&L does not autosave or keep browser drafts. Refreshing or leaving the page clears unsaved inputs. Discard changes restores saved values without changing the server. If a changed order is outside the current dates, View entered values under Unsaved changes in this page shows its inputs while the page remains open.
If Save fails, keep your entries and follow the displayed recovery action. A conflict means the source or saved version changed; choose Review latest values before trying again. Keep this page open while resolving an unconfirmed Save. Do not assume a timed-out request failed or submit a different amount without checking the saved state.
Owners and collaborators with View Profit & Loss can read the form's report. Saving requires Manage Profit & Loss permission. Ordinary form membership is not sufficient. The form owner grants P&L through Custom collaboration permissions. Return to P&L or choose Refresh after access changes; you do not need to reload the browser.