What is cost of goods sold (COGS)?

Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the total cost of the products you sold in a period: what you paid to buy or make them, usually including inbound shipping and duties.

How WooCommerce handles it

For years WooCommerce had no cost field, so stores used plugins (for example "Cost of Goods for WooCommerce") or spreadsheets. WooCommerce 10.3 (October 2025) added a core Cost of Goods Sold feature. It's off by default; you turn it on under WooCommerce › Settings › Advanced › Features, and it adds a cost field to products.

Two limits to know:

• Costs aren't written onto orders placed before you turned the feature on, so older sales have no cost attached.
• Core Analytics has no profit report built on it, so many stores still work out COGS in a spreadsheet from an Analytics export. Askshelf is another route: it reads the cost saved on each order.

The basic formula is simple:

COGS = units sold × cost per unit, added up across products

A worked example

Say in April you sold 200 notebooks that cost $4 each and 50 pens that cost $1.50.

• COGS: (200 × $4) + (50 × $1.50) = $800 + $75 = $875

If those sales brought in $2,500 in net sales, your gross margin is ($2,500 − $875) ÷ $2,500 = 65%.

Why it matters

Sales tell you what came in. COGS tells you what it cost, and without it you can't know whether a best seller makes money. Askshelf reads the cost saved on each order and reports cost of goods and gross profit for a date range, once the feature is on and your products have costs. The guide on adding cost of goods to WooCommerce covers setup, and WooCommerce profit reporting shows what to do with the numbers.