Shopify released an update just a few days ago to allow merchants to enter the per item cost of a product variant in the Shopify admin. This is definitely something we know many Shopify merchants had been asking for so they can calculate COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) and profit margins.

Before this update, the only way to store this data in Shopify was to use Metafields. However, since Shopify doesn't have their own metafields editor, the merchant will have to use an app to add the metafields data and it just requires more steps to get that data in there. Then you have to make sure you're entering the data consistently. As you can see, this method is a bit clunky.

With this latest update, it's just so much simpler. You'll basically just see an additional field called "Cost per item" right on the page where you edit the product variant information. It even tells you the margin when you enter it as you can see in the screenshot below:

On our side of things, we're already looking into adding this new field in our Shopify data exporter app, EZ Exporter, and our Shopify inventory management app, EZ Inventory.

For EZ Exporter, having this field available will allow our customers to generate reports displaying their profit margins and other types of data where the product cost is a factor.

For our EZ Inventory app, we're looking into providing an option for our customers to specify a mapping for the cost field in their inventory file so they can bulk update the costs of the products in their Shopify store instead of having to go through them one by one.

While this update seems tiny, this is actually quite an important update from Shopify as this is something pretty much all of their customers can use. It would certainly solve headaches and save time for a lot of Shopify store owners out there.