Somewhere in your shop, a product is losing money.
You can’t see which one. Costs drift, every channel takes a different cut, and your spreadsheet is a snapshot of January. Trackost keeps one live per-unit cost — materials to orders — so every sale shows what you actually kept.
14 days · no card · $1/mo × 3 months
Here’s one that went bad. Nothing beeped.
UNDERWATER SINCE JUL 9FIG. 01 — TRAVEL TIN 4OZ · PRICE VS TRUE COST · EXAMPLE
- you charge 9.00
- true cost 6.90
- MAR · oil +12%
- MAY · wax +4% · ads
- JUL 9 · crossed9.57
fig. 01–03 — a worked example, not a brochure.
If you turn materials into products, this is what your numbers look like when they can’t go stale.
REAL FEES ON SHOPIFY
REAL FEES
ORDERS
+ COMMISSIONHow a good margin dies
Three invoices, nine months, one bestseller. None of them broke anything.
Oil goes up 12%.
You pay the invoice and move on. The spreadsheet still says $0.98 an ounce.
Fees change under you.
Wax +4%. Offsite ads take up to 15% of the orders they touch. The sheet has no column for either.
−$0.57 a unit, ×132.
Your bestseller, underwater since July. Losers sell fine — that’s what makes them expensive.
A number that can’t go stale
Buy, make, batch, sell. Change one thing at the start and it lands on every order at the end.
Buy
Purchases re-average material cost the moment you log them.
Make
Recipes re-price live — labor and overhead folded in.
Batch
Runs move real inventory; cost snapshots at make-time.
Sell
Shopify syncs orders with its real fees; Faire syncs orders plus its commission; Etsy syncs orders — fee import next.
Evidence, in three exhibits
The three moments the number moves — and what the app shows you at each one.
The average never goes stale.
Weighted-average cost, recomputed on every purchase. No cell to remember.
The recipe prices itself.
Bill of materials, labor, overhead — one live figure, before you commit to a price.
The channel’s cut, in public.
The same candle keeps 63.6% on Shopify and 20.5% wholesale on Faire. Averages hide the bleeder.
An afternoon,
not a weekend.
CSV out of your spreadsheet or Craftybase, into the migration console. A dry-run validates every row — nothing is written until you commit. Or send us the files: white-glove migration is free on every plan.
PRICING
then $49 · $39 annual
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Studio: every feature, all 17 reports, unlimited orders. 14-day trial, no card. Business adds the Amazon tier — sync coming soon. Your data exports to CSV anytime — nothing held hostage.
Fair questions
“My spreadsheet works fine.”
It did — the day you built it. Suppliers and fees have moved since; the sheet hasn’t. A spreadsheet is a snapshot. This is a feed.
How long does moving my data take?
An afternoon. CSV in, dry-run preview, commit. Or free white-glove — send the files, check the numbers when we’re done.
What if I sell somewhere you don’t sync?
Shopify syncs orders with its real fees; Faire syncs orders plus its commission; Etsy syncs orders today, with fee import landing next. Markets, wholesale invoices, your own site — manual orders in seconds, identical math. Amazon isn’t connected yet — the Business plan is where it lands.
Do I need to understand accounting?
No. Buy, make, sell — the weighted-average and COGS math runs underneath. Your accountant gets the Schedule C worksheet.
What does “true cost” mean, exactly?
Materials at what you actually paid, re-averaged on every purchase, plus labor and overhead, plus the channel fees recorded on that order. True profit is what’s left.
And if I leave?
Everything exports to CSV, anytime, on every plan. Nothing held hostage.