About
Margins answers questions about the money side of your business — what's actually profitable, which channel is worth the spend, where the cash went — using your live data rather than a file you exported last Tuesday.
The distinction that matters is where the answer comes from. Most AI tools answer from whatever you paste into them, so the answer inherits whatever was wrong with your export. Margins reads your sales channels, payment processors, ad platforms, and bank accounts directly and reconciles them against each other, so the number it gives you is one you can act on rather than one you have to go verify.
This article covers what Margins is for, what it does without you, what stays yours, and where the edges are.
In this article
What Margins is for
What Margins does on its own
What stays yours
Where the edges are
1. What Margins is for
Margins connects your financial, operational, and marketing data into one system so all aspects of your business and all team members are working off of one source of truth. It answers questions across all three of these domains, including:
Which products actually make money? Sale price minus what the unit cost you, per SKU, per channel, with returns and fees where they belong.
Which channel is worth it? Real-time revenue by channel next to the ad spend, fees, and returns that channel generated, not the platform-reported return, which counts the revenue and skips the costs.
Where did the cash go? Inflow, outflow, and net across every account you've connected, without reconciling anything by hand.
Which campaigns are actually working? What is the real cost of your ad spend across your different ad platforms.
Alongside your own figures you'll see peer comparisons, Peer growth next to your growth, Peers AOV next to your average order value, so a good month has context rather than just a direction.
2. What Margins does on its own
Once your accounts are connected, these run without you:
Imports your sales, orders, refunds, fees, and payouts from every connected channel.
Imports your ad spend and performance from every connected ad platform.
Imports your bank and card transactions, and categorizes the large majority of them automatically.
Syncs cost per unit from Shopify, where you keep it up to date there.
Automatically calculates COGS for every order, using your cost per unit.
Recalculates everything downstream when something changes, add a cost per unit and COGS recalculates from that cost's start date forward.
Flags what it can't confirm, rather than guessing and leaving you with a number that looks fine and isn't.
3. What stays yours
Two things, and both are quick once you're in the habit.
Your cost per unit. Margins needs your cost per unit to keep your COGS honest. Just keep Cost per item current in Shopify or update it in Margins. See Adding your cost per unit.
The transactions Margins can't place. It categorizes most of what comes through your accounts automatically and asks about the rest, usually where the bank descriptor gives it little to work with. Left alone, that spend sits in the wrong place rather than disappearing. See Clearing transactions that need your input.
Key takeaway: Margins can only be as accurate as what you've connected and confirmed. Everything else it handles.
4. Where the edges are
Margins never moves money or changes anything. Every connection is read-only. It reads your transactions, orders, and spend, and can't move funds, place orders, refund a customer, or edit anything on the platforms you connect.
Margins can only see what you connect. Spend on a card you didn't connect is invisible, and revenue from a channel you skipped isn't counted. This cuts both ways, a skipped ad account makes your margins look better than they are, which is the version nobody notices.
Your numbers settle over time. Refunds, fees, and payouts land after the sale, so recent periods keep moving for a while. That's the data completing, not changing its mind.
Margins isn't your bookkeeping or tax product. It doesn't file anything, and it isn't a replacement for your accountant.
FAQs
Is my data safe?
Is my data safe?
Yes. Every connection is read-only. Margins reads and never writes to your connected platforms. It can't move funds, place orders, or change anything at the platforms you connect.
What does Margins cost?
What does Margins cost?
Free for up to 3 seats, with no time limit and no credit card. Margins Enterprise covers larger setups — multiple brands in one workspace, unlimited users, and a query-ready data warehouse.
Can I use my own AI tool with it?
Can I use my own AI tool with it?
Yes. Connect AI on the dashboard connects Margins to Claude, ChatGPT, or another AI tool through MCP, so you can ask questions and build reports in the chat you already have open. See Connect Margins to your AI stack.