What is Cost per item in Shopify, and how do you add it to many products at once?

Where do you enter Cost per item on a product?

Open the product from Products, click Cost per item in the Price section, enter the Cost, and Save.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Products
2. Product details
3. Price
4. Cost per item

Zoom

Enter your own cost — for resold goods, the price you paid the manufacturer, excluding taxes, shipping, or other costs. Cost per item doesn't apply to gift card products.

With a cost saved, the Price section shows projected Profit and Margin, unless Charge tax on this product is selected; each variant needs its own cost.

How do you add Cost per item to many products at once?

For more than a few products, use the bulk editor on the Inventory page. Variants that don't track quantity don't display there; give them a cost on the product page.

1. Go to Products › Inventory and select the variants.
2. Click Bulk edit (the Help Center's inventory bulk-editing page calls this button Edit variants).
3. If Cost per item isn't a column yet, click Columns and add it.
4. Enter each cost, click Save, review the confirmation dialog, then click Save changes.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Products
2. Inventory
3. Bulk edit

Zoom

In a product CSV, the Cost per item column takes the number only, without a currency symbol. Updates to existing items need the overwrite option turned on, and with it a blank non-required column overwrites values as blank.

Receiving a purchase order or transfer doesn't change Cost per item: it stays fixed.

Does adding Cost per item later fix past profit reports?

Not for sales already made: profit reports cover only products and variants that had cost recorded at the time they were sold.

If orders are missing from Gross profit by product, those variants likely lack cost information. The Month-end inventory value report likewise totals on-hand stock on products with a cost per item value assigned.