Profit tracking
Profit tracking for Shopify: 8 tools compared
Shopify shows you revenue. What is left of it appears nowhere — cost of goods, ad spend, shipping, returns, payment fees and discounts land in four different places, and none of them is the shop dashboard.
Eight tools that close that gap, compared. They do it in three different ways — and which one is right depends on the question you have right now.
The short verdict
- You want to know which channel brings which revenue? → Triple Whale or Polar Analytics
- You want to know your real margin? → TrueProfit or BeProfit
- You want to know, before you decide, what a decision does to your margin? → Foreqast
- You want to understand customer value over a lifetime? → Lifetimely
Why the revenue in your Shopify dashboard says nothing about your profit
Between revenue and what is left at the end of the month sit six positions Shopify does not know about:
| Position | Where it lands | Why it gets missed |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of goods | Supplier invoice | Falls weeks before the sale |
| Ad spend | Meta, Google | Sits in a different account |
| Shipping and fulfilment | Carrier | Estimated flat instead of calculated per order |
| Returns | 2–6 weeks after the sale | Time-shifted, so invisible in a monthly comparison |
| Payment fees | Shopify Payments, Klarna, PayPal | A percentage, so dismissed as “small” |
| Discounts | Promotion weeks | Reduce the margin, not the visible revenue |
Add them up and the contribution margin in retail typically sits well below what the dashboard suggests — and it varies more between products than it does between months.
Three kinds of tool for three different questions
The market is usually treated as one category. There are actually three groups answering different questions. None replaces another, and plenty of shops run two in parallel.
Attribution: where does the revenue come from?
Tools: Triple Whale, Polar Analytics, partly Lifetimely
This group connects ad platforms, shop and analytics and assigns revenue to the channels, campaigns and customer groups it came from. It answers where the marketing budget works and where it evaporates.
- Good for
- Splitting budget between channels, judging campaigns, customer segments.
- What it does not do
- They rarely calculate the full contribution margin including goods, returns and shipping. Attribution answers where revenue came from — not what is left of it.
Margin measurement: what is actually left?
Tools: TrueProfit, BeProfit, Sellerboard (Amazon)
This group pulls every cost block together and calculates the real net profit — per order, per product, per channel, continuously and without a spreadsheet. For the question “is my shop profitable”, it is the most accurate answer there is.
- Good for
- The current state, product decisions, pricing, judging a discount.
- What it does not do
- They measure what happened. What a decision will do to the margin is not the job they took on.
Margin forecasting: what happens to the margin if I change something?
Tools: Foreqast
Knowing how profitable the shop is today is the starting point. In practice you make decisions all the time that change exactly that margin: renegotiate or accept purchase prices, raise prices, turn the ad budget up or down, change the range, run a promotion.
Each of those shifts the margin — and the effect only shows up in the result weeks or months later. This group calculates the effect beforehand and then tracks how the margin actually develops.
- Good for
- Purchasing and budget decisions with lead time, pricing, early warning when a margin tips.
- What it does not do
- No attribution at campaign level, no real-time figures per order.
Which group when
| Your question | Group |
|---|---|
| Which channel brings the revenue? | Attribution |
| Is my shop profitable? | Margin measurement |
| Is this product worth it? | Margin measurement |
| What does an 8 % more expensive purchase do to the result? | Margin forecasting |
| Above which CAC does this product stop paying? | Margin forecasting |
| What is a customer worth over a lifetime? | Attribution / LTV |
Four questions before you buy
- 01Which of the three questions is yours?Attribution, level or forecast — the groups differ from each other far more than the tools within a group do.
- 02A look back, or a basis for deciding?Is establishing that the margin fell enough, or do you want to know in advance which decision will lower it?
- 03Which data sources do you need?Ad accounts, carriers and the accounting all sit outside Shopify. Not every tool connects all three.
- 04How much setup does it take?If you do not maintain cost of goods in Shopify, no tool can calculate your margin — whatever it promises.
The 8 tools compared
| Tool | Group | Strength | Time frame | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Analytics | Reporting | Revenue, orders, channels | Current state | included |
| Triple Whale | Attribution | Marketing attribution, broad suite | Current state | ~$149 |
| Polar Analytics | Attribution / BI | Many sources, free analysis | History | ~$750 |
| Lifetimely | Attribution / LTV | Customer value over time, P&L | History | ~$34 |
| TrueProfit | Margin measurement | Net profit per order, near real time | Current state | ~$35 |
| BeProfit | Margin measurement | Cost tracking, report templates | Current state | free |
| Sellerboard | Margin measurement | Amazon fee logic | Current state | ~$15 |
| Foreqast | Margin forecasting | Effect of decisions on the margin | Forecast | €39 |
These are entry prices from the vendors' own pages and public directories, checked on 24 August 2026; the dollar figures are the vendors' own currency. Several of them scale with your revenue or order volume, so treat them as a starting point. The sources are listed at the end.
Disclosure: this is our own product.
Foreqast in detail
From €39The only forecast that does the arithmetic on your decision.
- Group
- Margin forecasting
- Who it is for
- Shops between €300k and €10m in revenue that regularly decide about purchasing, prices and ad budget.
- How it works
Foreqast connects Shopify, the accounting (DATEV, lexoffice, sevDesk), Google and Meta Ads and Sendcloud for the actual shipping and return costs, and models from them how each cost block reacts to a change.
Money arrives at the end of a chain: order → invoice → payout from the provider → bank balance, with the goods paid for weeks before any of it. The balance is the last link, and by the time it moves, the decision behind it is old.
Where each kind of tool plugs into the chain - Deal in the CRMdecision
- Ordercommitted
- Invoiceissued
- Open itemdue on
- Payment receivedbooked
- Bank balanceresult
Foreqast reads here. Accounting, open items and the drivers before them — where the decision can still be changed.
Agicap, Tidely and Commitly read here. Day-accurate and true to the cent — but the cause is months behind.
- Cost a decision before you make itWhat does an 8 % more expensive purchase do to the result, and from which month is it visible? How much margin does €5,000 more ad budget cost? What is left of a price increase after discounts and returns?
- Tipping points instead of metrics“Above a CAC of €34 this product runs at a loss from October” — a number with a date, instead of a percentage for last month.
- The trend, with its causesThe margin was 21 % six months ago and is 16 % now; 3.4 points of that go back to a risen CAC, 1.2 to higher purchase prices.
- Where it stops
- No marketing attribution and no channel analysis at campaign level. If that is your question, this is the wrong group — run one of the attribution tools beside it.
- Price
- from €39 a month, cancel monthly. Free on every plan during early access, no card.
TrueProfit
From ~$35- Group
- Margin measurement
- Who it is for
- Shops that want their real net profit per order and per product, continuously and without Excel.
- Stronger at
- Pulls cost of goods, ad spend, fees and shipping together automatically and calculates at order level, close to real time.
- Where it stops
- It shows how high the margin is — not how a pending decision will affect it.
- Price
- roughly $35–$200 a month, 14-day trial.
BeProfit
free- Group
- Margin measurement
- Who it is for
- Shops that want cost tracking and ready-made profit reports, and would rather start free.
- Stronger at
- All the cost blocks in one dashboard with report templates, plus order, shipping and inventory metrics beside the profit. A free plan makes the first look cost nothing.
- Where it stops
- Reports the past, like the whole group; the paid entry sits above TrueProfit's for a comparable job.
- Price
- free plan, then about $49 a month.
Sellerboard
From ~$15- Group
- Margin measurement
- Who it is for
- Sellers whose revenue is mostly Amazon and who need the fee arithmetic right down to the order.
- Stronger at
- It knows Amazon's fee logic — the hard part, and where a generic tool gets it wrong. Also the cheapest entry here by a wide margin, with a full month of trial.
- Where it stops
- Built for Amazon. If Shopify is your main channel, this is the wrong shape of tool.
- Price
- $15 a month annually, $19 monthly.
Triple Whale
From ~$149- Group
- Attribution
- Who it is for
- Shops spending enough on ads that the question is which channel and which creative earned the revenue.
- Stronger at
- Attribution done seriously: its own pixel, multi-touch models and marketing mix modelling, with creative and cohort analysis on the same surface.
- Where it stops
- Priced on your GMV, so the bill grows with the shop. And it answers where revenue came from, not what was left of it.
- Price
- free dashboard, then from roughly $149–$179 a month, scaling with GMV.
Polar Analytics
From ~$750- Group
- Attribution / BI
- Who it is for
- Larger shops with someone who wants to build their own reporting across many sources.
- Stronger at
- Breadth of sources — shop, ads, email, support, subscriptions — with free analysis rather than a fixed dashboard set, and attribution as a module on top.
- Where it stops
- The highest entry in this comparison, priced on GMV. And it is an analysis layer, not a forward model.
- Price
- free starter tier, Core from about $750 a month by GMV.
Lifetimely
From ~$34- Group
- Attribution / LTV
- Who it is for
- Shops whose real question is what a customer is worth over time, with a serviceable profit view beside it.
- Stronger at
- Cohort LTV done properly, including a prediction of future customer value, plus a daily P&L. Every feature is on every tier.
- Where it stops
- Priced by order volume, so a high-order, thin-margin shop pays like a large one. Backward-looking apart from the LTV prediction.
- Price
- free tier, then from about $34 a month by order volume.
Shopify Analytics
included- Group
- Reporting
- Who it is for
- Shops that want to know what sold and through which channel, and are not yet asking what was left over.
- Stronger at
- Already there, free, and correct on every number Shopify itself owns: orders, sessions, conversion rate and channel reports.
- Where it stops
- It knows revenue, not profit — the four cost blocks that decide your margin all live outside the shop. And it forecasts nothing.
- Price
- included in every Shopify plan.
Which tool for which shop?
- You are starting out and just want to see your real profit → TrueProfit or BeProfit
- You sell mainly on Amazon → Sellerboard
- You want to know which channel brings which revenue → Triple Whale or Polar Analytics
- You want to understand customer value and cohorts → Lifetimely
- You regularly decide about purchasing, prices and budget → Foreqast
- You want broad analysis across many data sources → Polar Analytics
Plenty of shops combine two groups: one tool for the current state and one for attribution or forecasting. The groups do not replace each other.
Questions buyers ask
Does Shopify show my profit?
No. Shopify Analytics knows revenue, orders, sessions and channels — every number the shop itself owns. Cost of goods, ad spend, shipping, returns and payment fees all land outside the shop, and those are the four blocks that decide whether the month carried you.
How do I calculate contribution margin per order?
Revenue of the order, minus cost of goods, minus shipping and fulfilment, minus payment fees, minus the discount granted, minus the ad spend attributable to it — and with a deduction for the share that will come back as a return. The last two are what make it hard by hand, and why the margin tools exist.
What is the difference between attribution and profit tracking?
Attribution answers where revenue came from: which channel, which campaign, which creative. Profit tracking answers what is left of it after every cost. They are different questions and different tools — attribution rarely calculates the full contribution margin, and margin tools rarely attribute at campaign level.
What is a margin forecast?
A model of how your cost blocks react to a change, so the effect of a decision can be calculated before you make it. Not “the margin was 16 % last month”, but “this purchase price lowers it to 13 % from November”. It presupposes a margin calculation and goes one step further.
How does a higher ad budget affect the margin?
In two directions at once, which is why it is hard to judge by eye. More budget means more orders, so more revenue and more cost of goods — the absolute contribution rises while the percentage margin usually falls, because the extra customer costs more to acquire than the last one. What matters is whether the additional contribution covers the additional spend, and how many weeks pass before the money is back.
When do risen purchase prices hit my profit?
Not when you order, and not when you pay — when the goods are sold. Between the two lie the payment term and the time the stock spends in the warehouse, so a purchase price agreed in July often shows up in the result in October. That delay is exactly why the effect surprises people.
Which tool accounts for returns and shipping costs?
The margin group does: TrueProfit, BeProfit and Sellerboard all pull shipping and returns into the calculation. Foreqast takes them from Sendcloud for the actual costs and carries them forward. The attribution tools generally do not — they were built for a different question.
Does my shop need cost of goods maintained in Shopify?
Yes, for every tool on this page. A margin calculation without a purchase price is a guess with a nice interface. If you have not maintained it, that is the first afternoon of work — and it is worth more than the choice of tool.
Go deeper
Sources
Everything stated about another vendor was checked against these pages on 24 August 2026. Scope and pricing change — check them yourself before you decide.
- https://www.shopify.com/analytics
- https://www.triplewhale.com/
- https://www.g2.com/products/triple-whale/pricing
- https://www.polaranalytics.com/
- https://apps.shopify.com/polar-analytics
- https://apps.shopify.com/lifetimely-lifetime-value-and-profit-analytics
- https://eightx.co/blog/compare/how-much-does-lifetimely-cost
- https://trueprofit.io/pricing
- https://apps.shopify.com/partners/true-profit
- https://apps.shopify.com/beprofit-profit-tracker
- https://reputon.com/shopify/apps/accounting/beprofit-profit-tracker
- https://sellerboard.com/
- https://www.saasworthy.com/product/sellerboard/pricing
- https://foreqast.app/pricing
Disclosure: this page is published by Foreqast, one of the tools compared. We have tried to describe the others as their own customers would — including where they are the better buy.
A forecast session, 20 minutes
We connect your shop and your accounting and calculate through a decision you have in front of you right now — the next order, or the ad budget for the fourth quarter.
Free during early access · no card required
The app
Order your next restock against a number
- Shopify and accounting synced, orders and fees included
- See what a restock does to your cash before you place it
- Ad budget, shipping and payment fees in the same curve
No credit card. First forecast in about 20 minutes.
Self-check
How much control do you have over your money?
Twelve questions on what you can see, how far ahead, and what your decisions are based on. About three minutes.
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