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

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Formula

Total Cost = Total COGS + Total Fulfillment Cost + Total Transaction Cost + Marketing Cost + Agency Fees + Opex + 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, fulfillment, transaction, and the order-fee part of the last four) are stored on each order.
  • Shared costs (recurring expenses and variable costs from Cost Settings) have no order. Upstack adds their full amount for the period to Marketing Cost, Agency Fees, Opex and Other Cost. The new and returning customer versions split that amount by net revenue. See how the split works.
Ad spend isn’t in any of these components. Add channel.spend if you want the full cost stack. With it, Total Cost equals Net Revenue minus CM4.

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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:
Recurring and variable costs are added to the last four operands automatically. See Custom Measures for the builder.

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Total Cost as a percentage of net revenue

For Total Cost %, 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: Total Cost % is 50.05% ($200,200 ÷ $400,000). Add $120,000 of ad spend and the full stack is $320,200, which leaves a CM4 of $79,800.

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How to Interpret It

The order-level column scales with sales. The shared column doesn’t, so Total Cost % falls as revenue grows even when nothing about your unit economics changed. To judge unit costs, use CM2 %, which leaves the shared costs out.

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Common Pitfalls

  • Missing costs show up as zeros. Each component needs the matching setup in Cost Settings.
  • Adding the new and returning customer versions works. Shared costs are split between them by net revenue, so NC Total Cost + RC Total Cost equals Total Cost, apart from costs on orders with no customer. In this example they add up to the same $200,200. Ad spend is the exception: NC and RC CM4 each subtract all of it.

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FAQ

No single measure. Use a custom measure as shown above, or read Net Revenue minus CM4, which also subtracts ad spend.
The cost measures above come from your orders and Cost Settings. Ad spend comes from your ad platforms as channel.spend. Add it to the formula if you want it.
See all Contribution Margin metrics →