When connecting your WooCommerce store to Katana, you can import all products and stock levels. Katana will import product names, variants, SKUs, and sales prices, but WooCommerce does not provide cost data.
Why do you need to define cost?
Without defining a cost, imported products would appear in Katana with an Average cost of 0.
To avoid this, you can set an initial cost as a percentage of the sales price during the import.
The percentage is applied to all imported products.
While it may not reflect the exact real cost, it gives you a consistent starting point across your product catalog.
Adjusting costs after import
After the import, you can fine-tune costs for individual products:
Via Stock Adjustment
A Stock adjustment is automatically created in Katana during the WooCommerce stock import.
Go to Stock screen > Stock adjustments tab, find the adjustment, and edit the Cost per unit column.
Via bulk update
Use the Update stock levels and safety stock levels template to upload stock costs in bulk.
How Katana uses initial cost
The initial cost defines the Average cost for items in the Inventory tab.
In the Items screen, the Cost column will still display 0 until you define a Product recipe (BOM) and/or Production operations.
Products manufactured in Katana will be added to stock at their manufacturing cost (recipe + operations).
Examples
Example 1: Taxes included in WooCommerce
WooCommerce product price = $100 (tax included).
Tax rate = 20% VAT.
Katana default sales price = $83.33 (calculated as 100 / 1.2).
If default cost is set at 80%, Katana imports stock with a cost of $66.66 (0.8 × 83.33).
Example 2: Taxes excluded in WooCommerce
WooCommerce product price = $100 (tax excluded).
Katana default sales price = $100.
If default cost is set at 60%, Katana imports stock with a cost of $60 (0.6 × 100).
Key takeaway: WooCommerce doesn’t provide product costs. During import, set an initial cost as a percentage of sales price, then adjust as needed in Katana via Stock adjustments or bulk updates.
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