# Track Profitability and Manage Product Costs Set up your cost of goods, shipping, and miscellaneous costs so the Autron AI Agent can calculate real profit margins. View per-unit economics, understand Amazon fee breakdowns, and identify your most and least profitable products. **TL;DR:** Enter product costs (COGS) by asking the agent, or with Add costs on a product's page in Goals on plans with the ad engine. Leave out Amazon's referral and FBA fees, which come from Amazon; add your purchase cost, inbound freight and anything else you pay per unit. Costs unlock break-even ACoS and profit per unit on Goals, and give Max profit goals something to optimise. URL: https://autron.ai/help/profitability-and-product-costs Updated: 2026-10-02 By: Autron --- The Autron AI Agent can calculate your real profit margins — but it needs to know your costs first. Once you've entered your cost of goods, the agent can give you a complete picture of your product economics, including Amazon fees, ad spend, and net profit. ## Why set up product costs? Without cost data, the agent can tell you your revenue, ad spend, and efficiency metrics — but it can't tell you whether you're actually making money. Once costs are set up, you unlock: - **Profit per product** — see which products are truly profitable after all costs - **Profit waterfall** — Sales → Cost of goods → Amazon fees → Ad spend → Profit, in one breakdown - **Per-unit economics** — selling price, fees, costs, and margin on a per-unit basis - **Maximize Profit goals** — the agent can optimize your advertising for profitability rather than just sales volume ## What costs can you set? For each product, you can provide three cost components (all per unit): | **Cost type** | **What to include** | | --- | --- | | Cost of goods (COGS) | Manufacturing or purchase cost per unit | | Shipping cost | Inbound shipping, freight, or logistics cost per unit — including moving stock from your own warehouse into FBA | | Miscellaneous cost | Any other per-unit cost (packaging, inspection, prep, your own warehouse storage, Amazon's inbound placement or storage fees spread per unit) | **Leave Amazon's referral and FBA fulfilment fees out.** Autron reads Amazon's own fee estimate for each product and deducts it separately, so adding them here counts them twice. Amazon's storage and inbound placement fees are not in that estimate. If you want profit to reflect them, work out a per-unit figure and put it under miscellaneous. > **Note** > > **Tip:** You don't need to enter all three — even just the COGS gives the agent enough to calculate a useful profit estimate. ## Where to enter costs There is no separate Products page in the agent: your products are listed on **Goals**. Enter costs one of two ways: - **Ask the agent**, in chat — examples below. - **From the product's page**, on plans with the ad engine. Open a product that has a goal from **Goals**. If it has no costs on file, the page says so and offers **Add costs**, which opens the agent beside the page, ready to set that product's costs. On the [older dashboard](https://autron.ai/help/using-the-older-dashboard), costs sit on the product's **Unit Costs** tab. ## Setting costs through the agent You can set or update costs for individual products through conversation: - "Set the COGS for my garlic press to $3.20" - "Update shipping cost for my knee sleeves to $1.50 per unit" - "Set costs for B07ABC1234: COGS $4.00, shipping $1.20, misc $0.30" ## Updating many products at once with a CSV For bulk updates, the agent can give you a CSV template. Make a copy, fill in your costs, and upload the CSV directly into the chat (using the attachment button) — the agent looks up each ASIN, applies the costs row by row, and gives you a summary when it's done. No need to leave the conversation. > **Note** > > **Costs apply from now onwards.** Each cost update takes effect immediately. The agent doesn't backdate or future‑date costs — historical profitability uses whatever costs were on file at the time. ## What changes once costs are in - **Goals shows break-even.** Where Autron has the product's price and Amazon's fee estimate, it shows an estimated break-even ACoS: what is left of the price after Amazon's fees and your costs, as a share of the price. Above that ACoS, an ad sale costs more than it earns. - **Growth caps far under break-even are flagged.** On a Grow sales goal, a cap 10 or more points under the product's break-even leaves the engine mostly cutting bids, so Goals marks it _Conflicts with goal_ and offers to raise the cap, or lets you mark it intentional. See [Manage goals](https://autron.ai/help/manage-goals). - **Profit per unit appears** on the product's page, after Amazon fees, your costs and ad spend, once there are recent sales to work from. - **Max profit goals have something to work with.** See _Using profitability data with goals_ below. Until a product has costs, none of this is shown for it. The **Profit** tile on [Today](https://autron.ai/help/today) carries a **†** for an estimate, and Today's brief says how many of your products are missing costs, with **Add costs**. ## Viewing profitability Once costs are in place, ask about profitability: - "What's my profit margin on each product?" - "Show me the profit breakdown for my garlic press" - "Which products are the most profitable?" - "Am I making money after ad spend and Amazon fees?" The agent will show you a waterfall that includes: - **Sales** (selling price × units sold) - **Cost of goods** - **Amazon fees** (referral fee, FBA fees, etc.) - **Ad spend** - **Net profit and profit margin** Plus a per‑unit economics view so you can see what each individual sale contributes after every cost. > **Note** > > **Note:** If you haven't entered costs for all your products, the agent will let you know. Profit figures for products without COGS will be overstated since the cost of goods won't be deducted. ## Using profitability data with goals Once your costs are set up, you can use the **Max profit** goal. Instead of holding ad spend to an ACoS or TACoS percentage, Autron bids to maximise your estimated profit, using your costs and Amazon's fees to value each sale. Set it per product: open the product from **Goals**, press **Change goal**, pick **Max profit** and press **Save goal**. The target on the Goals list and in **Start the ad engine** only takes an ACoS or TACoS cap, which is why Max profit does not appear there. Or ask the agent: - "Switch my garlic press to maximize profit" - "Set all my products to maximize profit" This is especially useful for products where your margins are tight and you need every unit sold to be profitable. ## Keep or export the answer - **Pin it.** Ask the agent for a Today panel of Profit and profit margin tiles, then press **Pin to Today** on the preview. They work over one of the preset ranges, such as the last 30 days, and refresh each time you open Today. See [Today](https://autron.ai/help/today). - **Export it.** Ask for the rows as a CSV and it hands you a download link.