How do I calculate cost of goods sold without doing the margin math on the side?
Enter beginning inventory, purchases, direct expenses, and ending inventory into Cogsly, add your revenue, hit Calculate. You get COGS, gross profit in dollars, and gross margin as a percentage in the same view, with the formula shown line by line. That is the whole tool. No account, no paywall, no upsell to bookkeeping software, nothing stored on a server.
Most free COGS calculators stop at the COGS number. If you want to know what that number means for your margin, you open a spreadsheet or a second calculator and do more math. Cogsly skips that step.
What is the COGS formula, and what does Cogsly actually compute?
The formula Cogsly uses:
COGS = (Beginning Inventory + Purchases + Direct Expenses) − Ending Inventory
If you add revenue to that, you also get:
- Gross Profit ($) = Revenue − COGS
- Gross Margin (%) = (Gross Profit / Revenue) × 100
So the inputs are five fields. Three are required (beginning inventory, purchases, ending inventory), one is optional for freight and duties (direct expenses), and one is optional for profit and margin output (revenue). Leave direct expenses blank and it is treated as zero. Leave revenue blank and you still get COGS, but the profit and margin rows stay hidden with a short note telling you why.
Everything runs in your browser. The numbers you type never leave the page. That is not a marketing line; there is no backend to receive them. Close the tab and the session is gone.
How do I include freight and duties in cost of goods sold?
Freight-in, import duties, and inbound handling are direct expenses. They are part of landed cost, which is the real cost of getting inventory to your door. COGS is supposed to reflect landed cost, not just the supplier invoice.
In Cogsly, there is a field labeled Direct Expenses / Freight-In. Add up inbound freight and duties for the period and put the total there. Cogsly rolls that amount into the COGS line. Skip the field and you get the three-input version of COGS that most free calculators produce. That works too, it is just less accurate for physical product businesses.
The reason this matters: a lot of sellers omit freight from COGS because their calculator did not have a field for it. They end up overstating gross profit by whatever freight cost was that period. On a $10,000 purchase with $800 in freight, that is an 8% swing in reported margin. If you are pricing against that number, you are pricing against a bad one.
What counts as a direct expense versus overhead?
Direct expenses are costs tied to moving specific inventory. Overhead is everything else.
Direct expenses (goes in the Direct Expenses field):
- Inbound freight from supplier to warehouse
- Import duties and customs fees
- Inbound handling and packaging for inbound shipments
- Inspection or quality-control costs tied to received inventory
Overhead (does NOT go in the Direct Expenses field):
- Rent, utilities, office supplies
- Salaries for staff not directly producing the goods
- Software subscriptions
- Outbound shipping to customers (that is a selling expense)
- Marketing and advertising
A quick test: if the cost goes up when you order more inventory, it is probably direct. If it stays flat whether you ship one unit or a thousand, it is overhead.
How do I get gross profit margin from the COGS number?
Once Cogsly has a COGS figure, it needs revenue to finish the math. Gross profit is revenue minus COGS. Gross margin is that same gross profit expressed as a percentage of revenue.
So if you did $25,000 in revenue and Cogsly calculated COGS of $15,500:
- Gross Profit = $25,000 − $15,500 = $9,500
- Gross Margin = ($9,500 / $25,000) × 100 = 38%
Cogsly shows all three values (COGS, gross profit, gross margin) in the same results panel, with the arithmetic written out line by line so you can check it. If revenue is less than COGS, the gross profit line turns red and the margin shows negative. You lost money that period, which is a useful thing to see clearly.
How is this different from Omni Calculator, Bench, or ActiveCalculator?
Omni Calculator is the SEO leader for "cogs calculator" searches. It does three-input COGS and nothing else: no gross profit, no margin, no direct expenses field. If you want margin, you click through to a separate margin calculator and retype your numbers.
Bench Accounting's tool is a lead-gen page for their $299-plus monthly bookkeeping service. The calculator itself is barebones. No margin, no profit, no expenses field. The real product they are selling is the bookkeeping subscription.
ActiveCalculator shows gross margin as a percentage but not gross profit in dollars, and has no direct expenses field. You still have to go somewhere else for the dollar figure and for anything landed-cost-related.
Cogsly is the four-in-one: COGS, gross profit in dollars, gross margin as a percentage, direct expenses field, formula breakdown you can verify. Free, no sign-up, nothing stored. That is it.
Do I have to include shipping costs in COGS?
Inbound shipping (supplier to you) belongs in COGS under direct expenses.
Outbound shipping (you to your customer) is a selling expense, not COGS. It sits below gross profit on the income statement.
People mix these two up constantly. If you put outbound shipping in COGS, your gross margin will look worse than it is, and your operating expense line will look better than it is. The numbers still add up to the same bottom line, but the margin story is wrong.
Cogsly's Direct Expenses field is for inbound costs only. The tooltip says so. If you are tracking outbound shipping, keep it in a separate line. Cogsly does not model it and neither should your COGS calculation.
What does the formula breakdown show?
After you hit Calculate, Cogsly displays the math in sequence, labeled by input name:
Beginning Inventory: $8,000
+ Purchases: $12,000
+ Direct Expenses: $500
- Ending Inventory: $5,000
= COGS: $15,500
Revenue: $25,000
- COGS: $15,500
= Gross Profit: $9,500
Gross Profit / Revenue × 100 = 38.00% Gross MarginIf you did not enter direct expenses, that line is omitted entirely, not shown as $0. If you did not enter revenue, the gross profit and margin rows are hidden. What you see reflects only what you typed, which is how it should be.
The point of the breakdown is trust. You can verify the arithmetic yourself, and you can learn the formula by watching it compute. For someone new to inventory accounting, that is worth more than the result.
Who is Cogsly for?
Sellers who want a COGS number and a margin number in one place, fast, without creating an account or loading three calculators in separate tabs. Shopify and Etsy operators reconciling at month-end. Bootstrapped direct-to-consumer brands checking margin before a reorder. Anyone who has ever done COGS in one tab and then opened Excel to finish the math.
If you run a bigger operation and need COGS by SKU, lot tracking, or automated pulls from your accounting software, Cogsly is not that tool. It is a calculator, not a bookkeeping system. For the check-my-margin job, though, it finishes the whole thought in one screen.
Try it at appcrib.com/cogsly. Free, no sign-up, calculations stay on your machine.