As Of December 2023, we introduced a simplified Entry View to COGS by popular demand.
In addition to merely capturing the cost of goods, the pre-December ’23 ‘detailed’ view offers the option of including the following additional COGS details:
The number of units purchased,
A currency code of purchase, which may be different from the currency code of the marketplace,
An exchange rate at the time of purchase,
Details of the product manufacturer
Personal notes relating to the purchase
If all the data is included, SellerLegend automatically performs currency conversion and determines the cost per unit, rather than requiring you to perform these calculations manually
Upon surveying the usage pattern of this detailed version of the COGS entry by our users, we observed that only a very small portion of the user base used these facilities
Moreover, some low-volume sellers remarked that our COGS details entry was more complex than some of our competitors, due mainly to the additional fields
We have therefore decided to provide a simplified version of the COGS entry for those of you who wish to expedite the time to set up product COGS
How Does This Affect Me If I Have Been Using the Detailed Version Of COGS Entry?
In two words, not much
The legacy Detailed View still exists and you can continue to use it exactly as you are used to
The Simplified View is ‘backwards compatible’ and interchangeable with the detailed view
You can toggle from one view to another at will from either one of the COGS entry views
When you need to change COGS, we will direct you the detailed or simple version, based on the type you last used
However, for new joiners after Dec. 6, 2023, we will default to the Simple View, which now becomes our preferred view for you to use
What are the UI differences between the Simple and Detailed Views?
Here are the screen layouts for each view:
The Detailed View
The Simple View
Notice the difference : The detailed view has 6 additional columns.
Provider
Notes
Total Paid
Currency
Conversion Rate
Units
Unless you are a power user, you are unlikely to need the additional columns
If you are just starting with us after December 6, 2023, we recommend you use the Simple View
If you ever need the Detailed view at a later stage, you can toggle to it without losing any data
You will find the detailed description of the COGS Views in this article
What Are The Differences In The bulk Upload Between the Simple and Detailed Views?
Here’s where the major simplification comes to fruition
In the detailed view,
if you have, say, 4 cost elements, because each cost element can have its own currency, conversion, units, total amount and notes, you have to have 4 Excel rows per cost element so that you can record the details per cost element
That makes for bulky, cumbersome Excel files, which take longer to import
Also, since Excel imports are limited to 10,000 rows per file, you may exceed that limit due to the rows duplication
In the Simple view,
Since the only attribute we record is the cost element name, there is no need for such duplication.
Instead, if you have, say, 4 cost elements per product (e.g, Manufacturing, Packaging, International Shipping, 3PL Storage), we use columns after the basic information to represent cost element names
Hopefully, The Following Examples Will Help Understand
In the Detailed View, one Cost Period with 4 Cost Elements requires 4 rows because
While the fields defining the product are constant,
The ‘detailed’ fields are variable by cost element,
And since we have 4 cost elements, we require 4 rows per product
In the Simple View, one Cost Period with 4 Cost Elements only requires 1 row because
We have thrown out the variable data, except for the Cost Element name
Even though we have still have the same 4 costs elements, we only need one row as we can use 4 columns of the same row to name the cost elements
True, we have lost the ability to record the 6 additional fields per cost element, but we have drastically simplified the data entry and the file management.
