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Free gift product costs: choose where a gift's cost counts
When you give a product away free with an order, that gift has a cost. Settings > Products lets you choose where Nexus counts that cost in your product results. The choice affects product cost, margin and Product Intelligence.
Problem and intended user
This page is for the ecommerce manager, the person who runs the store.
The problem arises when you run gift-with-purchase offers. A gift costs you money but brings no sale of its own. If the gift cost is left out, or sits in the wrong place, product margins can mislead you.
Current workflow
Most merchants take product sales from Shopify admin reports into a spreadsheet and subtract costs from their own cost sheet. They decide by hand whether a gift's cost belongs to the gift or to the paid product it shipped with.
Prerequisites
Counting a gift cost needs data that Nexus can measure. Check these first:
- Integrations: your Shopify store is connected.
- Data: your orders carry a product cost on your gift lines. Without your order data, Nexus cannot measure coverage. It never treats missing data as zero.
- Matched gifts: Nexus has found matched free-gift products in your store. If it has not, the page shows No free-gift product pairs found and keeps free gifts excluded.
- Volume: at least 80% of your delivered free-gift lines have a product cost.
How Nexus works
Nexus reads your delivered orders and the product cost of each order line. It finds free-gift lines, matches each gift to its paid product and measures how many have a cost. Nexus counts a delivered order line with a total of zero as a free gift, whether you discount it 100% or price it at zero. It matches gift products that a supported free-gift app creates as copies of your original product. Fixed rules do the matching, the cost and the margin. One AI request can then refresh the written insight on Product Stickiness. AI sets no cost.
You approve every change. Nothing changes until you confirm in the Recompute product costs now? window.
Change the setting
WARNING
Saving starts a recomputation right away. It recalculates your product costs and refreshes Product Intelligence. It can also send one Product Stickiness request to an AI model. Read the Before you confirm card on the page first. It names the model and shows the estimated cost.
- Go to Settings > Products.
- Select the choice you want. A choice that is switched off cannot be selected.
- Select Save in the save bar. To drop your change, select Discard.
- Read the Recompute product costs now? window. It repeats your choice, the provider and model, the request limit and the estimated average cost.
- Select Confirm and recompute. To stop, select Cancel.
A toast reads Recomputation queued, or Free-gift cost handling is already up to date. if your choice already applies.
Exact output
The three choices
Open Settings > Products. A badge at the top of the card, Applied now, names the choice in use. The COGS coverage line says how much of your free-gift data Nexus can price.
| Choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| Don't count free gifts in product costs | Gift products stay out of product cost and margin calculations. This is the choice a store starts with. |
| Count on gift product | The free gift carries its own product cost when you give it away. |
| Count toward the original product | The matched paid product carries the cost of its free gift. |
The Recomputation card
The Recomputation card shows what the job is doing. While it runs you cannot change the setting.
| Phase shown | What happens |
|---|---|
| Matching gift products | Nexus pairs each gift with its original product. |
| Recomputing product costs | Nexus recalculates cost and margin. |
| Publishing updated costs | Nexus saves the new numbers. |
| Refreshing product insights | Nexus updates Product Intelligence. |
The card shows how many products Nexus has processed and, when it can tell, the time left. When the job ends well, the card reads Updated and names the choice now in use. It can add a warning from the job. With no job, it reads No recomputation is running.
The Before you confirm card names the AI provider and model, the request limit and the Estimated average cost, or Estimate unavailable.
What to do with it
| What you see | Decision or action | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage meets the requirement and gifts are matched | Choose Count on gift product if each gift carries its own cost. Choose Count toward the original product if the paid product carries it. | ecommerce manager |
| A choice is switched off, with an amber message | Follow the table in Why a choice can be unavailable. If the message says Nexus cannot read your order data, contact support. | ecommerce manager |
| Updated on the Recomputation card | Check Margin in Insights > Products > Product List. | ecommerce manager |
Expected value and measurement
The setting can help your product margin match what a gift costs you. Nexus promises no change in margin or sales.
To check the result, wait for Updated. Then open Insights > Products > Product List and compare Margin for products you pair with gifts against a note you made before you confirmed. Margin covers the last 30 days. See Product List.
Warning: you cannot isolate the effect of this setting when prices, discounts or product costs changed at the same time.
Limitations and exceptions
- Coverage is required. The COGS coverage line shows the share Nexus measured. It also says when Nexus has found no delivered free-gift lines, when product cost data is not connected, when coverage data cannot be read right now and when the measurement is incomplete.
- Estimates and AI. The Estimated average cost is an estimate. The Product Stickiness insight is AI-written and can be wrong.
- The page cannot load. Could not load Products settings means your saved setting did not load. Select Try again before you change anything.
- A start fails. Nexus shows Could not update free-gift cost handling with a reason, such as Nexus could not start the recomputation. Your currently applied cost handling has not changed. The earlier setting stays. If a recomputation is already running, wait for it to finish. After We couldn't refresh recomputation status., the setting shown is the last confirmed result.
- Demo Mode. The page shows sample data and a sample-data badge. The choices are locked, and you cannot save. It can instead show Products settings aren't available while you're exploring sample data. To review this setting, switch to your own store's data.
Why a choice can be unavailable
Nexus switches off a choice when counting it would give wrong numbers. The reason appears under the choice in amber text.
| Message under the choice | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| At least 80% measured free-gift COGS coverage is required before costs can be counted. | Too few gift lines have a product cost. | Make sure your gift products have a cost recorded. The coverage line rises as more delivered gift lines carry one. |
| A message that says product cost data is not connected. | Nexus has not linked your order data yet. Nexus keeps gifts excluded and does not treat the missing data as zero. | Contact support. |
| A message that says coverage data is unavailable. | Nexus cannot read your order data right now. Nexus keeps gifts excluded until it can measure coverage. | Reload the page later. Nexus measures coverage again on every page load. Contact support if the message stays. |
| No matched free-gift products are available yet. | Nexus has not found a gift product to count. | None. Nexus keeps gifts excluded. |
| Nexus can't match all your gift products to an original product yet. | At least one gift has no matched paid product. This blocks Count toward the original product only. | Use Count on gift product or keep gifts excluded. |
| This option is not available for the current gift-product matches. | The matches do not allow Count toward the original product. | Use Count on gift product or keep gifts excluded. |
| Wait for the current recomputation to finish before changing this setting. | A recomputation is running. | Wait for it to end. |
If the recomputation fails
If the job fails, the card reads The recomputation did not finish. Your earlier setting stays in force. Select Retry recomputation when you are ready. The Recompute product costs now? window opens again. Select Confirm and recompute to start the job.