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COGS analysis

Roll up actual cost of goods sold across SKUs, channels, and periods. Pull from your ERP and your operations data, allocate freight and duty, and refresh the margin view daily.

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The prompt

I want to automate COGS analysis. Build me a flow that pulls cost data from my ERP, allocates freight and duty to the SKU level, joins to sales data by channel, calculates margin by SKU and channel, and outputs a daily refreshed margin view.

Just copy and paste the prompt into a new Parabola flow to get started.

What Parabola builds

A workflow with six steps you can edit:

1. Pull SKU cost. Standard cost or actual cost per SKU from the ERP. Plus the open PO cost for products coming in.

2. Allocate freight and duty. From freight invoice data, allocate freight cost to each SKU on the shipment. Same for customs duty.

3. Join to sales. Pull sales by SKU by channel by day. Apply the right cost basis per period.

4. Calculate margin. Gross margin per SKU per channel. Bucket by category, by brand, by region.

5. Compare to plan. Variance against the forecast COGS and the planned margin.

6. Output the margin view. SKU-level margin report, channel roll-up, variance vs plan, the gross margin trend.

Why teams stop doing this manually

COGS analysis is the report finance rebuilds every period from scratch. Cost data from the ERP. Freight allocations from a spreadsheet. Duty allocations from a customs broker file. Sales data from the ecommerce platform and the wholesale system. Each source goes into its own tab. The tabs join into a margin view that holds for that one period only.

Next period, the file gets rebuilt. New SKUs got added. The freight allocation methodology has to be reapplied to the new shipments. The cost basis for a SKU that was on promotion needs adjusting. The work is the same work, every period.

What gets lost is the ability to see margin moving in real time. By the time the analysis lands, the period is done. Pricing decisions get made on last quarter's margin view.

A flow does the assembly automatically. The margin view refreshes daily. The finance team analyzes the variance, not the file build. Pricing decisions get made on current data.

How it works

Step 1. Paste the prompt.

Open Parabola, paste the prompt in section 2, and let it ask follow-up questions about your cost basis, your freight allocation methodology, and your channel breakdown.

Step 2. Connect your data.

API connections to your ERP, freight invoice data, customs broker file, ecommerce platform, wholesale system. Plus the plan or forecast as a side input.

Step 3. Run it daily.

The flow refreshes the margin view each morning. Finance reviews. New shipment? It flows through automatically. Cost basis change? Update the rule, the next run picks it up.

Related prompts

FAQ

Does this work for businesses with multiple cost methods?

Yes. Standard cost for most SKUs, actual landed cost for international shipments, FIFO for products with volatile inputs. The flow handles a mix.

How does freight allocation work when a shipment has SKUs of different sizes?

Configurable. Most common is allocation by weight or by value. The flow handles either, plus a hybrid for shipments where weight and value diverge.

Can the flow handle promotional pricing?

Yes. Margin per SKU per channel uses the actual selling price, including promotional discounts. The variance against plan margin captures the promotional effect.

What about returns and write-offs?

Returns flow back through the margin view as negative units. Write-offs hit a separate inventory loss line. Both reconcile to the GL.

How is this different from a BI dashboard?

BI dashboards consume the joined data. The flow builds the joined data. Without the flow, BI shows margin from last quarter's manual roll-up.
See margin move in real time.
Paste the prompt, point it at your ERP and your sales systems, and let the margin view refresh on its own.
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