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New Customer Total Cost is every cost Upstack charges against first orders, from product cost to overhead, except ad spend. Upstack doesn’t ship it as a single measure, but you can build it from the new customer cost measures it does have.

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Formula

NC Total Cost = NC COGS + NC Other COGS + NC Shipping + NC Handling + NC Other Fulfillment + NC Gateway + NC Other Transaction + NC Marketing Cost + NC Agency Fees + NC Opex + NC Total Other Cost

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Formula Components

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How It Works

The components split into two kinds:
  • Order-level costs (COGS through Other Transaction, and the order-fee part of the last four) are stored on each order. They count here when the order is a new customer order: a Shopify customer’s earliest non-cancelled order. See customer type.
  • Shared costs (recurring expenses and variable costs) have no order. Upstack splits them between the NC Marketing, Agency Fees, Opex, and Total Other measures and the returning customer versions, in proportion to each segment’s net revenue. See how the split works.
Ad spend is not in any of these components. Add channel.spend if you want the full cost stack.

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Build it as a custom measure

In a custom dashboard, open Custom Measures, set the format to Currency and the period total to Sum, then enter:
The new customer share of recurring and variable costs is added to the last four operands automatically. See Custom Measures for the builder.

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NC Total Cost as a percentage of net revenue

For NC Total Cost %, wrap the same sum in parentheses, divide by orders.new_customer_net_revenue and multiply by 100. Set the format to Percentage and the period total to Average, so Upstack divides period totals instead of averaging daily ratios.

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Example

A 30-day month for a store with $400,000 of net revenue, $255,000 of it from new customers. That’s a 63.75% share, so new customers carry 63.75% of the store’s $17,000 of shared costs: NC Total Cost % is 50.03% ($127,567.50 ÷ $255,000). NC CM4 subtracts all of the store’s ad spend, not a share. Add the $120,000 of ad spend and the full stack is $247,567.50, which is exactly NC net revenue minus NC CM4 ($7,432.50).

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How to Interpret It

Look at the order-level column on its own. That’s what serving first orders actually costs, and it should scale with NC net revenue. The shared column is a revenue-based slice of store overhead, so it tells you more about your revenue mix than about acquisition.

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Common Pitfalls

  • Adding NC and RC total costs. This works: shared costs are split, not copied, so the two add up to Total Cost. Ad spend is different, because NC and RC CM4 each subtract all of it.
  • Missing costs show up as zeros. Each component needs the matching setup in Cost Settings.

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FAQ

No single measure. Use a custom measure as shown above, or read the difference between NC net revenue and NC CM4, which includes ad spend.
Usually ad spend. NC CM4 subtracts all of your ad spend, including retargeting aimed at past buyers. Shared costs such as payroll, rent, and agency retainers are only charged in proportion to new customers’ net revenue.
See all Contribution Margin metrics →