Custom Costs Explained

The Custom Costs section of your cost settings help you track any expenses that fall outside of traditional cost categories.

There are multiple ways of adding and/or syncing custom costs to your account, including manually adding costs, maintaining a list of your costs in a Google spreadsheet that will automatically sync with your Lifetimely account, importing costs with a CSV file, and syncing your Shopify billing history with Lifetimely.

Select from the links below for more detail on each option:

How to add one-off custom costs

  1. Go to Custom costs & data integrations > Cost Data https://app.lifetimely.io/cost/custom-costs
  2. Click the button "+ Add Custom Cost"
  3. Enter a name for the custom cost, frequency, and enter a start date (and optionally an end date) for your cost
  4. Click either "Add and Close", or "Add and Continue" to add more custom costs.

How to sync custom costs from a Google spreadsheet

How to sync custom costs from a Google Spreadsheet:

  1. Go to your Custom costs tab in Costs & expenses
  2. Click the blue "Import costs" button
  3. Click "Sync Google Sheet"
  4. Authenticate the connection in your Google account
  5. Back in your Lifetimely account, click on one of the "Follow this format on the spreadsheet" links to download a template of the required formats
  6. Click File > Make a copy
  7. Enter your custom costs into the spreadsheet
  8. Copy a link of your Google Sheet
  9. Return to Lifetimely and paste the link into the pop-up window
  10. Click "Save" and allow up to two hours for the initial sync to complete

How to import custom costs via CSV

If there are any other custom costs you'd like to add in a single upload, you can take advantage of the new import feature by clicking the "Import CSV" button and either uploading a CSV file or entering your data manually.

How to sync your Shopify and Shopify App subscriptions to your Custom Costs

There are two major steps to adding your subscriptions to your account:

  1. Download your billing history from Shopify
  2. Import your billing history to Lifetimely in the Custom costs tab

How to download your billing history from Shopify

  1. From your Shopify admin, click Settings > Billing
  2. Click “View all billing history” in the Recent Bills section
  3. Click Export CSV file
  4. Select “Current Page”
  5. Select CSV format
  6. Click “Export invoices”. You’ll receive the file as an email attachment at the email address associated with your Shopify account

How to upload your billing history file to Lifetimely

  1. Go to the Custom costs tab of your Costs & Expenses
  2. Click the “Shopify & Apps costs” button
  3. Click “Import CSV”
  4. Click “Upload data from file”
  5. Select your CSV file 
  6. Review your data for errors (and manually import any other entries if you'd like)
  7. Click "Continue"
💡 Tip: Once your data is imported, it's worth taking a minute to review all the new entries. If you've previously entered any subscriptions manually, you can delete these by clicking on the trash bin icon next to the Cost description. You can also edit any costs by clicking on the pencil icon. If by any reason you want to keep the cost setting but not account for it, you can switch it to Inactive. Once a cost is Inactive, your COGS will be recalculated to remove the cost from historical calculations.
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