PrestaShop cost price: how to enter your cost and work out the margin

Where do you enter the cost price in PrestaShop?

On the product page, in the pricing tab. The field may have different names depending on the version and translation: cost price, wholesale price or pre-tax wholesale price. It always means the same thing: how much you pay the supplier per unit, excluding tax.

1. Open Catalog → Products and click the product.
2. Go to the pricing tab.
3. Find the cost price field below the selling price and enter the amount excluding tax.
4. If the product has combinations, check the variants. Each can have its own cost price.
5. Save the product.

Watch out for the word “wholesale”. In the back office, “wholesale price” sometimes means the purchase cost, while in conversation wholesale prices are selling prices for businesses. Those are two different things. We cover prices for business customers in the guide on wholesale prices in PrestaShop.

The Fullmetrix guide to calculating margin in PrestaShop points to a common problem: after an import or migration the cost field stays empty or holds zero. The store then shows a 100% margin on everything, and the margin report means nothing.

How do you work out margin without confusing it with markup?

Margin is profit divided by the selling price. Markup is profit divided by the cost price. Work out both on amounts excluding tax.

The values in the table are examples. They show something important: when the supplier raises the price from €60 to €75 and you leave the selling price alone, the margin drops from 40% to 25%. To keep it, the selling price has to rise to €125, not to €115 as intuition suggests.

Remember too that this is the gross margin on the product. MyPresta, in its article on margins in e-commerce, reminds you that real profit is further reduced by shipping, payment fees, ads and returns. The cost price is the foundation, but not the whole calculation.

How do you load a new supplier price list into the store?

Thursday, 22:50. The supplier has sent a spreadsheet with new prices for 140 items. You open a product, look up the reference in the spreadsheet, copy the amount, save, go back to the list. By the tenth product you start wondering whether the spreadsheet prices include tax or not.

You have three options:

• By hand on the product page. Fine for a few items.
• CSV import. Good for hundreds of items, if the columns in the file match the store fields. Before importing, export your current prices so you have something to go back to.
• A margin module. Paid modules, for example Margin and Markup from PrestaShow, calculate the selling price from the cost price according to a rule. They help when you want to keep a fixed margin automatically.

Whichever way you choose, check three things: whether the price list excludes tax, whether the references in the spreadsheet match those in the store, and whether variants have separate prices.

What do you do with products whose margin has dropped?

A new price list is a good moment for a review. After updating cost prices, sort products by lowest margin and split them into three groups:

• Raise the selling price. Products that sell well and have a margin below your threshold. Make the increase as a separate operation, with a preview of the new prices.
• Leave them. Products that bring customers into the store even at a low margin, for example popular small items bought together with pricier things.
• Find another supplier or withdraw them. Products with a low margin and weak sales. Keeping them in the range costs more than they bring in.

Set the margin threshold yourself, based on your store's costs. There is no single right number for every trade.

How do you update cost prices in a conversation with the chat?

With the TellMyShop module you paste the price list into the conversation and write what you want. Your chat (Claude or ChatGPT) matches items by reference or EAN, shows the cost price before and after and the margin, and leaves selling prices alone if you ask it to.