FAQ
Overview · Installation · Configuration · Usage · Developer notes
Does the add-on change my products or orders?
Section titled “Does the add-on change my products or orders?”No. It stores cost prices and order snapshots in its own tables. Your products, prices, orders and taxes are never modified.
What happens when I change a cost price?
Section titled “What happens when I change a cost price?”New orders use the new cost. Existing orders keep the cost they were placed with, so past profit never changes. Items added to an existing order in the admin panel take the current cost.
Orders from before the installation show no profit.
Section titled “Orders from before the installation show no profit.”Open Orders → Profit reports → Tools and create snapshots for the period. They use today’s cost prices and are marked as estimated.
Why does an order say that costs are missing?
Section titled “Why does an order say that costs are missing?”At least one item has no cost price. Its cost counts as 0, so the profit is too high. Enter the cost price: orders placed from then on use it. An existing snapshot is not recalculated, so the cost of that item stays 0 for the old order; the report marks such orders with a missing-cost note.
Which orders are in the reports?
Section titled “Which orders are in the reports?”Orders in the statuses selected in the settings (Paid and Complete by default). The order page shows the profit for every status. In Multi-Vendor, parent orders are not counted; the vendor orders are.
Is tax part of the revenue?
Section titled “Is tax part of the revenue?”By default, no: when your prices include tax, the included tax is subtracted so profit is calculated on net amounts. Switch off Exclude included taxes from revenue to count gross amounts.
Are shipping and payment fees included?
Section titled “Are shipping and payment fees included?”Shipping charged to the customer counts as income; enter the real shipping cost on the order page to see the shipping result (by default the actual cost equals the charge). The payment fee (percent and fixed) and a fixed cost per order from the settings are stored with each new order and subtracted.
Do product variations have their own cost?
Section titled “Do product variations have their own cost?”Yes: in CS-Cart 4.17 and later every variation is a product, so each has its own cost price. Cost prices for the legacy option combinations (inventory) are not supported.
Can vendors see my costs?
Section titled “Can vendors see my costs?”Vendors see only the costs and profit of their own products and orders. In Vendor access to costs and profit you choose no access, view only or view and edit. Vendors cannot edit the real shipping cost or the extra cost of an order.
Does the add-on slow down checkout or the storefront?
Section titled “Does the add-on slow down checkout or the storefront?”No. A single small write happens when an order is placed (the snapshot), wrapped so that a failure can never stop the checkout. Nothing is shown on the storefront.
What happens if the license lapses?
Section titled “What happens if the license lapses?”Without a valid license (no key after the 14-day start period, an invalid or revoked key, a domain the license does not cover, or no successful check for 14 days), profit reports, the CSV export, the order profit panel and the margin columns are hidden. Cost prices stay editable and new orders keep receiving their cost snapshot, so the history is complete when the license is active again. Your products and orders are never affected.
The admin panel shows a license notice.
Section titled “The admin panel shows a license notice.”Open Add-ons → Manage add-ons → Product Cost & Profit Reports: the License card at the top says what is wrong. Fix it on the License tab and click Check now. See License.
Does the add-on work on my staging copy?
Section titled “Does the add-on work on my staging copy?”Yes. Subdomains of your licensed domain (for example staging.example.com) and local development hosts (localhost, private IP addresses, *.local, *.test) are covered by the same license.
What happens if your license server is down?
Section titled “What happens if your license server is down?”Nothing changes for 14 days: the add-on keeps working and retries every hour. Only if no check succeeds for 14 days is it switched off until the next successful check.
Does the license check slow down my storefront or checkout?
Section titled “Does the license check slow down my storefront or checkout?”No. The check runs only in the admin panel or from cron, at most once a day, never while customers browse or check out.
Still stuck?
Section titled “Still stuck?”Work through the troubleshooting guide, then contact support with your CS-Cart version, edition, PHP version and the add-on version (1.0.0).