About
The red banner at the top of your Products page "[n] products are missing cost per unit for COGS calculation," is Margins telling you it has no cost for those products, so it's booking $0 of COGS every time one of them sells.
Nothing is misconfigured on your end. Margins gets your sales, units, and product catalog from your channels automatically, but the cost per unit is the one thing only you have. This article covers what the banner tells you about your numbers and the three reasons it's usually higher than you'd expect.
Symptoms
I see a banner saying products are missing cost per unit
A product's margin shows as 100%, or close to it
Average cost shows $0.00 or is blank on the product list
My COGS looks too low and my profit looks too good
1. "My margins look impossibly good"
What you're seeing: high or 100% margins on products that you know cost you money.
Why it happens: with no cost per unit, COGS for that product is zero, so Margins counts the full sale price as profit. That flows straight into your product margins, your channel comparisons, and your peer benchmarks, which is how a product that loses money on every order ends up looking like your best performer.
How to fix it:
Go to Products.
Turn on the toggle ① next to the missing-cost banner. The list now shows only the products without a cost, and every one of them reads $0.00 under Average cost ②.
Click Actions → Export file to get the list as a file you can work from.
Work out a landed cost for each one. See Calculating your landed cost per unit.
Enter the costs. See Adding your cost per unit.
The banner count drops as you go, and margins on those products correct themselves from each cost's start date forward.
2. "The number is much higher than my actual product count"
What you're seeing: a count in the hundreds when you sell a few dozen products.
Why it happens: it's usually one of two things.
Duplicates across channels. The same product from Shopify, Amazon, and TikTok counts as three products until you merge them. Merging collapses them into one, and the count drops accordingly. See Merging duplicate products.
Inactive and historical products. Products you no longer sell still sit in the catalog and still count. Use Filters → Attributes → Active to see only what you're currently selling, and Actions → Hide from product list to put the rest out of the way.
Recommended: clear your merge recommendations before you start entering costs. It's common for the missing-cost count to fall by half, and every cost you enter after merging is a cost you only have to enter once.
3. "I entered a cost but the product doesn't show the updated number"
What you're seeing: a cost on the Cost per unit tab, but the product still showing an older cost.
Why it happens: two likely causes.
The new cost starts later than the period you're viewing. A cost dated June 1 doesn't apply to units that sold in March. Check the From date on the cost entry against the Period filter on the list.
You entered the cost on a non-primary product before a merger. After a merge, only the primary product's cost is used. Open the product, expand Product details, and check which product is primary.
How to fix it: add a cost with an earlier start date, or enter the cost on the primary product.
Still stuck?
If the count doesn't move after you've merged your duplicates and entered costs, reach out to our Support team at [email protected] for help.