Merchgain – Gross Margin & Profit Reports for WooCommerce
A free WooCommerce profit report on the native Cost of Goods Sold field: gross margin and gross profit per product, category and period.
Solid choice
Merchgain is a solid plugin choice in 2026, with a few things worth checking first. Was last updated 1 week ago, and scores 64/100 on our health check.
- Actively developed — last update 1 week ago
- Tested with the latest WordPress (7.1)
- Small user base (<10 active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Merchgain stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| COGS | #57 |
| cost of goods sold | #36 |
| gross margin | #5 |
| gross profit | #11 |
| profit report | #59 |
About Merchgain
From the official readme · v0.2.4Description
WooCommerce tells you what you sold. It does not tell you what you earned.
Since WooCommerce 10.3 the cost of goods sold lives in the core product editor, and every order
records the cost at the moment of sale. Merchgain reads that field and answers the question the
sales report cannot: how much of this revenue is actually yours. It is a WooCommerce profit report
built on data your store already has – no import, no second place to keep costs.
It only reads. No product, no price, no order, no cost value is ever written back to your store.
What you get
- Summary cards – revenue, cost of goods, gross profit and margin for the period you pick.
- Profit per product – sortable, searchable, paginated.
- Profit per category – the same sales grouped by product category. A product that sits
in several categories counts in each of them, so category totals can add up to more than
the summary – the screen and the CSV file both say so. - Missing cost warning – how many products have no cost recorded, with links straight to
the products, and how much of your revenue that leaves uncovered. If the cost is kept by
another plugin instead, it says so and names it, so an empty report stops being a mystery. - CSV export – the current view, exactly as you see it on screen. Very large reports are
capped at 20,000 rows and the file says so on its last line, so a short file is never a
silent one – and a category export that adds up to more than the summary says why. - Foreign currency warning – orders in a currency other than your store currency are named
and left out, instead of being quietly added into one wrong total.
What makes it different
- CSV export in the free version. Not behind an upgrade.
- The missing cost warning is a feature, not an upsell. You see coverage next to every
number, so you always know how much of the report rests on real data. - Works without WooCommerce Analytics. Merchgain runs its own queries against the order
tables, so it does not require the Analytics module to be enabled. - Nothing leaves your server. No account, no external service, no telemetry, no calls home.
The report is calculated on your hosting and stays there.
How the numbers are calculated
This is a cost of goods sold report, so every number below rests on the cost recorded at the
moment of sale – not on a current price list.
Revenue is the net line total of sold items after discounts, excluding tax and shipping. Refunds
count as negative amounts in the period they were issued, not in the period of the original sale.
Orders counted by default: completed, processing and refunded.
Margin is profit divided by revenue – not markup on cost. A product bought for 60 and sold for
100 has a 40% margin here. That single distinction is what separates a profit margin report from
a sales report.
Profit and margin are calculated only on items whose cost is known. An item with no cost recorded
still counts towards revenue, but it is never treated as if it had cost zero – the report says so
instead of quietly inflating your margin.
Documentation and answers: https://merchgain.com/
From the makers of Merchlint.
Installation
- Install and activate the plugin. WooCommerce 10.3 or newer is required.
- Go to WooCommerce -> Settings -> Advanced -> Features and switch on “Cost of Goods Sold”.
- Fill in the cost on your products – the field is in the General tab of the product editor.
- Open “Profit & margin” in the admin menu – its own item, just below the WooCommerce block.
New orders record the product cost at the moment of sale, so the report starts filling up from
the point where costs are in place.
Frequently asked questions
How is margin calculated?
Profit divided by revenue. A product bought for 60 and sold for 100 gives 40 profit and a 40% margin. This is not markup on cost, which for the same product would be 66.7%. The two get mixed up often, so the definition is printed under the report as well. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/MARGIN/
Where do the costs come from?
From the Cost of Goods Sold field built into WooCommerce 10.3 and newer. Merchgain does not store costs of its own and does not add a second cost field to your products. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/COGS/
Does any data leave my server?
No. Merchgain makes no outgoing connections at all – no analytics, no licence check, no update ping of its own. Everything is calculated by your own database and displayed in your own admin.
What about orders placed before I filled in the costs?
They have no cost recorded, and Merchgain reports them as “no cost data” rather than as a cost of zero. Their revenue still counts; they are simply left out of profit and margin, and the coverage line tells you how much of your revenue that is. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/FILL/
My product genuinely costs zero and it shows up as missing a cost. Why?
Because WooCommerce cannot tell the two apart. Saving a cost of zero – on the product or on an order item – makes the core store nothing at all rather than a zero, so “cost of zero” and “no cost entered” end up identical in the database. Rather than guess, Merchgain always says “no cost data” and never “cost 0”. Free samples, giveaways and downloadable extras will therefore appear on the missing cost list. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/ZERO/
I issued a refund and my historical profit changed. Why?
That is WooCommerce, not Merchgain. Creating a refund makes the core recalculate the cost of every item on the parent order using the product’s cost as it is today. If the product cost changed in the meantime, the stored history changes with it. Merchgain reports what is in the database; it does not silently keep a second copy. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/REWRITE/
Which month does a refund belong to?
The month the refund was issued, not the month of the original sale. A September sale refunded in November leaves September untouched and shows as a negative amount in November. Reports of closed months do not change behind your back. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/REFUND/
I have orders in euros and dollars. What happens to them?
They are left out of the report and named in a warning above the numbers. Merchgain does not convert exchange rates, and adding several currencies into one total would produce a number that looks right and is not. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/CURR/
I keep my costs in another plugin. Why does Merchgain show them as missing?
Because those costs live in that plugin’s own storage – a field of its own or, for ATUM, a table of its own – not in the WooCommerce core field. Merchgain tells you so instead of leaving you guessing: the missing cost warning counts how many of those products have a cost kept by another plugin and names it. Recognised: Cost of Goods: Product Cost & Profit Calculator for WooCommerce, WooCommerce Cost of Goods, ATUM Inventory Management for WooCommerce, Booster for WooCommerce, BjornTech PayPal POS integration for WooCommerce, Ni Cost of Goods for WooCommerce and Cost Of Goods For WooCommerce…
Does it work with High-Performance Order Storage?
Yes, and with the classic post-based storage as well. Cost values live in the order items table, which is the same in both layouts. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/HPOS/
Which orders are counted?
Completed, processing and refunded. Refunded is in the list on purpose: a full refund flips the parent order to that status, and leaving it out would make a fully refunded order count as minus its own value instead of zero. WooCommerce Analytics excludes only pending, failed and cancelled by default, so this set is one status narrower – it skips on-hold. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/STAT/
My category totals add up to more than the summary card. Why?
Because a product that sits in several categories is counted in each of them. A mug in both “Kitchen” and “Gifts” adds its sales to both rows, so the rows add up to more than the store actually sold. The alternative – picking one category and dropping the sale from the other – would quietly understate every shared category, which is worse. The summary cards are counted from the order items themselves, so they are never double counted. The screen says this under the table, and a CSV export of the category view says it on the last line, with both numbers. Longer answer…
How much history does the report cover?
All of it. There is no date limit. Any range can be selected, including a single month from years back; profit and margin appear wherever a cost was recorded on the sold item.
Does it slow my store down?
The report runs in the admin only, never on the storefront, and results are cached for an hour. Entering a cost in the product editor clears that cache immediately, so the numbers never wait for a timer. For anything else that changes the figures – an order status, a refund issued elsewhere, an import – there is a “Recalculate” button next to the export.
Who can see the report?
Anyone with the “view WooCommerce reports” capability, which is the same permission WooCommerce uses for its own sales reports. A shop manager has it, and so does a bookkeeper account limited to reports only. The report has its own item in the admin menu, “Profit & margin”, sitting just below the WooCommerce block – not inside the WooCommerce submenu, where an account limited to reports would never see it: that submenu needs a permission such an account does not have. Longer answer: https://merchgain.com/r/PERM/
Changelog
The missing cost warning now finds ATUM purchase prices and recognises Booster and BjornTech PayPal POS.
0.2.4
- Fixed: the missing cost warning did not see the purchase prices kept by ATUM Inventory
Management. Since its version 1.5.0 ATUM keeps them in a table of its own, while Merchgain was
reading an old product field that ATUM no longer writes to. It reads the table now. The old
field is no longer counted at all: in a shop that ran ATUM before 1.5.0 it holds a frozen copy,
and other plugins use a field of the same name, so no single plugin could honestly be named
for it. - Fixed: costs kept by WooCommerce Cost of Goods were credited to the WPFactory cost plugin, which
only imports them. The warning now names the right plugin. - Fixed: a variation with no cost of its own in Cost of Goods: Product Cost & Profit Calculator for
WooCommerce takes its parent’s cost there, and is now counted, so a shop that keeps those costs
on variable products no longer sees a zero. - The warning now also recognises Booster for WooCommerce and BjornTech PayPal POS integration
for WooCommerce, and it names each plugin by the name the plugin gives itself. - When Booster for WooCommerce is set to “Treat Variable Products as Simple Products”, a variation
takes its parent’s purchase price there, and the warning counts it as a cost kept in Booster. - Negative amounts are no longer counted either – only amounts above zero.
0.2.3
- Fixed: on MariaDB the product and category tables – and their CSV export – came out empty when
sorted by profit or by margin, and profit is the default sort. The database rejected the sort
expression, and the screen showed no rows and no error. MySQL was not affected. No figure was ever
wrong: the summary cards and the other sorts worked. - Below a report with at least one costed sale, a one-time request to review the plugin on
WordPress.org, whatever your verdict. It shows only on the report screen, never on the dashboard,
and stays closed for good once you follow it or choose “Don’t ask again”. The choice is kept per
user and removed on uninstall. - New screenshots, taken on an English demo store, with captions that say what each screen shows.
0.2.2
- The missing cost warning now says when a cost is kept by another plugin. It counts those
products and names the plugin: Cost of Goods for WooCommerce (both of its fields), ATUM
Inventory Management, NI WooCommerce Cost of Goods and Cost of Goods. A cost of zero in such a
field is not counted, because moving a zero changes nothing. - Those values are counted, never used. Profit and margin still come only from the cost field
WooCommerce itself provides – a figure taken from a field nobody can verify would be worse than
the gap it fills.
0.2.1
- The plugin is now listed as “Merchgain – Gross Margin & Profit Reports for WooCommerce”. Only the
displayed name changed: same plugin, same directory slug, same settings, same data. - Faster category view when an extension adds order-level costs to the report: the grouping used
to run two queries per product. On a store with 11,000 sold items that was 6,978 queries and
2.6 seconds; it is now 18 queries and 0.8 seconds. The figures are unchanged. - Uninstalling no longer removes cached data belonging to Merchgain extensions. Each extension
cleans up after itself.
0.2.0
- First public release. Versions 0.1.0 and 0.1.1 were review builds submitted to the plugin
directory and were never published, so this is the first version anyone can install. The code
is the one that passed review; only the version number changed.
0.1.1
- The report no longer limits how far back it reaches. The 365-day window is gone from the
code entirely, along with the notice that explained it.
Screenshots
For developers
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Best Merchgain alternatives
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FAQ
Merchgain: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Oct 2, 2026
Is Merchgain free?
Yes. Merchgain is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Merchgain safe to use in 2026?
Merchgain is a solid plugin choice in 2026, with a few things worth checking first. Was last updated 1 week ago, and scores 64/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Merchgain?
Merchgain is active on <10 WordPress websites and has been downloaded 260 times since it launched in September 2026. It was downloaded 266 times in the last 30 days.
Does Merchgain work with WordPress 7.1?
Yes. The developer has tested Merchgain up to WordPress 7.1.2, the latest release. It requires WordPress 6.7 or newer.
What PHP version does Merchgain need?
Merchgain requires PHP 7.4 or higher. Most hosts run PHP 8.x today, so it works on any modern WordPress hosting.
When was Merchgain last updated?
The latest version, 0.2.4, was released on September 25, 2026 (1 week ago).
Who makes Merchgain?
Merchgain is developed and maintained by baltano.
What are the best alternatives to Merchgain?
The most popular alternatives to Merchgain are Ni Cost of Goods for WooCom… (200+ installs), Profitblue (10+ installs) and NIT Sales Analytics for Woo… (<10 installs).
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