How are COGS refunded?
A customer refund and a refund of your product costs are separate events. If you refund a customer after shipping, you may still have paid your supplier. If an order is canceled before production, you may have incurred no product cost at all.
Profit Calc has separate controls for revenue, COGS and Custom Order Expense so you can reflect your store's process.
Check these cost settings
Select your store and open Other COGS Settings.
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Database COGS | Whether supported calculations use the costs previously saved with each order rather than today's product-cost inputs. |
| COGS are not decreased on refund | When enabled, ordinary refund calculations retain COGS. When disabled, eligible refunded product costs are reduced. |
| Adjust COGS for edited orders | When enabled, removed Shopify order items can reduce COGS, including when ordinary refund COGS is retained. |
| Custom Order Expense not decreased on refund | Controls whether ordinary refunds reduce the custom order expense component. |
These settings work together. In particular, retaining COGS on refunds does not mean removed items are ignored when edited-order adjustment is enabled.
Common situations
| Situation | What to check |
|---|---|
| An order is canceled before anything is made or shipped. | If you incurred no costs, check that the resulting COGS and expenses are zero. Cancellation alone is not proof that every cost was automatically removed; retention settings, saved overrides or supplier charges may still apply. |
| A customer is refunded after the product ships. | If the supplier keeps its payment, retaining COGS may reflect your actual cost. Check expenses separately because shipping or fulfillment charges may also remain. |
| One item is removed from a multi-item order. | Check the edited-order setting and the removed item's cost. Verify that the remaining items still have their expected costs; quantity rules or saved order totals can affect the result. |
| A product is exchanged. | Inspect the original item, replacement item and any return/refund adjustments. Check the costs actually incurred rather than assuming either zero cost or two complete purchases. |
| You manually edited a saved order cost. | Check the saved value and whether the order has a protected override. Manual edits can follow a different path from ordinary calculated costs. |
| Your supplier invoice totals were uploaded by CSV. | Check the saved values and your store's refund/edit setup. Uploading a CSV does not universally disable later cost adjustments. |
If your intended policy differs between canceled, shipped and edited orders, avoid changing a global setting solely to fix one example. Inspect the example order first and use Edit Orders where an order-specific correction is appropriate.
Why does a refund affect a different reporting day?
The dashboard's refund activity follows the refund date rather than being limited to orders placed in the selected period. For example, an August order refunded in September can contribute to September's refund activity.
Refund-related revenue adjustments can also involve returns or removed items. A refund-related total is not necessarily the same as the cash paid back through a gateway. Other reports can use a different order/refund scope; read the notes for the report you are comparing.
Refunds are already included in the dashboard's revenue calculation. Do not subtract the separate Refunds total again when checking profit. Chargebacks and disputes are accounted for separately.
How to investigate an order
- Open Order Breakdown and find the order.
- Use the information icon beside COGS to inspect the available product-cost and custom-expense contributions.
- Compare the saved values on Edit Orders with the settings above and any charges from your supplier.
- Check transaction fees separately. A full customer refund does not necessarily mean your payment provider refunded its processing fee.
Changing refund or edit settings can affect historical reports when they are recalculated. Check a representative past order as well as a new order after changing your setup.
If you need uploaded invoice costs to remain final through refunds or order edits, contact support through the in-app chat to confirm your store's configuration. Include an example order and the COGS and expenses you expect to retain or remove.