Understanding Marketing Costs

The Custom Costs section of your cost settings enables you to track expenses beyond Meta, Google Ads, and TikTok costs. While these platforms are automatically ingested, you may need to import additional costs such as agency fees, platform fees, or offline marketing spend.

Without accounting for all expenses, we cannot provide an accurate contribution profit, hindering informed decision-making. By manually adding costs such as agency fees or offline marketing spend, businesses gain a comprehensive understanding of their marketing investments and can optimize strategies accordingly.

When to Use a Marketing Costs Import

Common use cases include:

Agency fees for managing paid search, paid social, or SEO campaigns
Platform fees such as Klaviyo email platform costs
Influencer costs for partnerships and collaborations
Affiliate network costs (e.g., Awin fees, other affiliate costs)
Offline marketing such as TV ads, billboard ads, print ads, or POS costs
SMS marketing costs
Other marketing costs not captured by connected platforms

How to Manually Add Marketing Costs:

Navigate to the Custom Data Import tab under ‘Connectors’ on the left-hand side navigation bar.
Select ‘Marketing Costs’.
Fill out the table provided with the following details:
- Store (optional): The store these costs apply to. Select from your connected stores, or leave blank if the cost applies across all stores.
- Shipping Country: The country these costs apply to. Select from the dropdown. Choose "All Countries" to apply to all markets.
- Start Date (optional): Specify the start date of the cost in the format yyyy-mm-dd. If no value is entered, the costs will be applied across the entire store period automatically.
- End Date (optional): If known, provide the end date in the format yyyy-mm-dd. If left blank, costs apply indefinitely.
- Period (required): Frequency of the costs incurred. See Period options below.
- Channel Group/Cost Description: The channel group the cost should be applied against.
- Currency: Select the currency of the cost. Costs are automatically converted to your reporting currency.
- Amount: Input the cost amount (e.g. if a period of 'monthly' was selected, this will be the monthly amount to you).
Repeat for additional costs and select ‘Submit Data’.

Your data will sync overnight and appear in your report.

Using CSV for Bulk Uploads:

Download the CSV template from the Marketing Costs page. The template includes a row per connected store with example values pre-populated. Fill in your data offline,

delete all rows you don't need, and upload by dragging and dropping the completed file onto the editor.

Period Options

Daily: Cost is applied every day within the date range
- Example: 10.00 daily = 10.00 per day
Weekly: Cost is applied every 7 days, starting from the Start Date
- Example: 100.00 weekly = 100.00 every 7 days
Monthly: Cost is applied on the same day each month, starting from Start Date
- Example: 500.00 monthly starting Jan 15 = 500.00 on the 15th of each month
Annually: Cost is applied once per year on the anniversary of the Start Date
- Example: 6000.00 annually starting Jan 1 = 6000.00 on Jan 1 each year
Once-off: Total cost is divided evenly across every day in the date range
- Example: 3000.00 once-off over 30 days = 100.00 per day

Ad Spend vs Marketing Fees

Costs are categorised as either ad spend or marketing fees based on the Channel Group/Cost Description selected. These categories appear separately in your marketing dashboards, allowing you to distinguish between direct advertising costs and associated fees.

Important: Choose the correct channel group carefully - selecting the wrong one will cause costs to appear in the wrong category in your P&L analysis.

Marketing Fees

The following channel groups are treated as Marketing Fees:

Platform Fee (e.g. Klaviyo Platform Fee)
CRM Agency Fee
Google Agency Fee
Paid Search Agency Fee
Paid Social Agency Fee
SEO Agency Fee
Other Agency Fee
Organic Search: Other

Any channel group containing 'Agency Fee', 'Platform Fee' or categorised under Organic Search is treated as a marketing fee.

Ad Spend

All other channel groups are treated as Ad Spend, including:

Influencer Costs
Offline Ads
Paid Search: Other
Paid Social: Other
Email: Other
Email CRM
Affiliate: Awin
Affliate: Other
SMS: Other
Direct Mail
Display: Other

Note: if you are entering a fee related to an affliate network (e.g. Awin management fees), use an Agency Fee channel group rather than the Affiliate channel group so that it is correctly categorised as a Marketing Fee.

Managing Your Imports

Adding Additional Costs

To add new costs without affecting existing ones:

Go to the Marketing Costs importer.
Do not modify any existing rows — changing any field on an existing row (such as the Channel Group) will create a duplicate entry rather than updating the original.
Add a new row for each additional cost.
Select Submit Data.

Editing Existing Costs

Because modifying an existing row in the importer creates a duplicate, the correct process to edit a cost is:

Go to My Imported Data in the Custom Data Import tab.
Locate the relevant marketing cost file and click the delete button to remove it.
Return to the Marketing Costs importer and re-enter your costs with the updated values (or use the CSV template to upload a revised file).

Why delete first? Unlike product costs (which use the latest upload), marketing costs are summed across all imports. This means uploading a revised row without deleting the original will result in both costs being counted, causing duplications in your reporting.