Correct the cost on a sale

Fix the cost recorded on one sale so its profit and margin are right, without touching inventory, the purchase order, or what a consignor is owed.

Use this when a sale’s cost was never entered, was entered wrong, or you’ve since learned what the pair actually cost you. Correcting it here fixes that one sale’s own profit and margin numbers.

Where: Analytics → Sales → Itemized Sales, on the sale’s row.

Who does this: whoever holds cost or financial-reports permission in your business — that permission is required to save a correction, even if more people than that can open the report itself.

What this does not do

This fixes the financial cost recorded on one sale, and nothing else. It does not touch the inventory unit that was sold, the purchase order it was received on, or the cost your remaining stock is carried at — if the shoe was received at the wrong cost, that’s a separate fix on the purchase order or the inventory unit. It also does not change what you owe a consignor: a consignor’s payout is worked out from the sale price and their commission rate, with no cost figure anywhere in that calculation. The reverse is not true — adjusting a payout later does rewrite this sale’s cost (see the warning below).

Correct the cost

Step	Where in AIM	What you do	What you should see
1	Analytics → Sales → Itemized Sales	Open the report	It opens on the current month to date, with Cost basis in the left filter panel set to Trusted.
2	Cost basis, left filter panel	Switch to Needs cost (or All, if the sale already has a cost you think is wrong), and set the date range to cover the sale	The sale appears. A missing cost shows as Unknown, and its profit shows as Excluded. The fourth tab, **$0 COGS**, is a what-if view — it displays unknown costs as$0 without changing anything.
3	The sale’s row	Click Review cost (no cost known yet) or Edit cost (a cost is already recorded)	The Review sale cost dialog opens, naming the product.
4	Review sale cost dialog	Note the cost currently recorded, before you change anything	Nothing to see yet — the dialog opens empty. The current cost is in the report row’s Cost column, and the preview at step 7 also shows it. There’s no undo for this correction, so note it now.
5	Cost per unit field	Enter the cost of one unit — not the sale’s total cost
6	Reason field	Enter a short reason, at least 3 characters
7	Preview impact	Click Preview impact	AIM shows the before-and-after COGS and gross profit for this sale. Nothing is saved yet. Check that the new COGS equals your per-unit figure times the number of units on the sale.
8	Save correction	Click Save correction	A confirmation appears, and the row’s cost, gross profit, net profit, and margin update immediately.

Sale not in the list? Cancelled, returned, failed, and Depop-refunded sales never appear in this report, and neither does a sale outside your chosen date range — none of those are something this screen can fix. Wholesale line items do appear, under the Wholesale marketplace, but their cost comes from the wholesale order rather than the sale, so Review cost will not save on one; fix those on the wholesale order itself.

Multi-unit sales: the cost field is always a per-unit figure. On a sale of 3 pairs, typing in what you think the whole sale cost — instead of the cost of one pair — triples the recorded cost. The preview total is the one number that catches this before you save.

Four things happen automatically, with no notice that your correction was touched:

• If a consignor payout on this sale is later adjusted, AIM shifts the sale’s cost by the same amount as the payout change. On a consigned sale, correct the cost only after the payout is settled.
• If the item from this sale is later returned to Shopify and restocked, and stock actually came back, AIM resets that sale’s cost back to $0 on its own — your correction is gone.
• If the sale’s fulfillment location changes, or the sale gets re-scanned onto a different physical unit, AIM recalculates the cost from inventory and replaces whatever you entered.
• Entering $0 does not clear the cost or flag the sale for review. It records a cost of exactly zero, which AIM then treats as a known, trusted figure — the sale won’t come back under “Needs cost.”

A correction you save today is not guaranteed to be the number that’s still there next month. Correct a sale’s cost once it’s fully settled — after any return or relocation is done — not while it’s still moving.

If something changes after you’ve saved

What happened	Effect on your correction	What to do
The sale’s item is returned to Shopify and restocked	AIM resets the sale’s cost to $0 on its own.	If the stock genuinely came back, leave it — the sale really has no cost now. On a full return the sale also drops out of this report, so there is no row left to correct; raise it with support if the reset was wrong. On a partial return the sale stays visible and you can re-enter the correction.
A consignor payout on this sale is adjusted	AIM shifts the sale’s cost by the same amount as the payout change.	Settle the payout first, then correct the cost. If the payout moved after you corrected, re-check the cost.
The sale is fulfilled from a location, moved to a different location, or re-scanned onto a different unit	AIM recalculates the cost from inventory and replaces your correction.	Re-apply the correction once the sale has fully settled, not while it’s still moving.
You saved the wrong number	There’s no undo button.	Open Review cost again and save the correct value — this is exactly why step 4 asks you to note the old value first.
You need to know who corrected a sale, and when	AIM records every correction.	Open Analytics → Team → Activity Log and look for the sale cost correction entries; each shows who, when, and the reason you typed. The old and new cost figures are in that log’s CSV export rather than on screen. Needs the Users permission.

What changes, and what doesn’t

Changes on this sale, immediately: its cost, gross profit, gross margin, net profit, and net margin all update. This also moves the sale out of “needs cost review” and into your trusted profit figures — including when you entered $0. For a marketplace sale (StockX, GOAT), profit is calculated from what you actually got paid, which is already net of that marketplace’s fees; for a retail or Shopify sale, it’s calculated from the sale price. The same cost correction can move profit by a different amount depending on which kind of sale it is.

This restates history — it doesn’t create a separate adjusting entry. If the sale happened last month, or three months ago, that month’s reported profit changes too, because every report reads the sale’s stored cost live rather than a locked-in snapshot. AIM has nothing that locks a prior month against this.

Reports catch up fast, but not instantly. The Itemized Sales report reflects your change as soon as you save. The Profit & Loss report can take up to about five minutes. A CSV you already exported, or a report email that already went out, is a snapshot from that moment — export or resend it again to see the corrected number.

What stays exactly as it was:

• Inventory quantities, the purchase order, and the cost your remaining stock is carried at — none of it is touched.
• What a consignor is owed on this sale.
• No journal entry or other bookkeeping document is created; this only changes the sale’s own recorded figures.

Related

• How the inventory numbers fit together — for what Available and Ready to list mean, since correcting a sale’s cost never changes either one.