BFCM price, margin and storefront checks

A manual worksheet for checking variant price restoration, contribution before and after a discount, and offer or policy mismatches across a Shopify storefront.

Use this guide with your own export, spreadsheet and storefront. It does not change prices, determine duty or tax, or decide whether a promotion complies with law. Community posts below explain why these checks exist; they are not legal authorities or independent verification of another store's current condition.

1. Price changes, restoration and prior-price display

Run all six checks for every variant in the campaign. A product-level success message is not enough.

Restore record example

This is a fictional worksheet row, not a report from a live store.

The identity and read-back advice follows 673303 post #2, which says that "Job finished" and "every intended price verified" are different outcomes. Post #7 covers CSV import traps and separates compare-at from price history.

For observed restoration failures, see 695140 post #16 on prices and sale badges left behind, and post #30 on variants missed by a parent-product revert. Post #27 is a developer's view of EU prior-price display; use it as a prompt for a separate market check, not as a legal opinion.

2. Landed-cost and contribution worksheet

Calculate one SKU or variant at a time. Enter all cost inputs yourself and write down the assumptions. A blank input is unknown, not zero.

This worksheet is deliberately app-independent. It does not use a saved shipment ledger or describe an app workflow. It exposes the arithmetic so you can check it in a spreadsheet before choosing a discount.

Inputs and units

Use one price currency for selling prices and shopper-facing subsidies, and one cost currency for landed costs. Define FX as cost-currency units per 1 price-currency unit. Write the FX source and date beside the rate.

Keep returns, advertising, overhead and other excluded costs visible in a notes column. If you want them in the scenario, add an explicit input rather than hiding them in duty or freight.

Formulas

First calculate landed unit cost:

L = C + D + F + I

For each price P, calculate contribution per unit in the cost currency:

contribution(P) = (P - P × r - k - S) × X - L

Compare the two scenarios:

contribution change = contribution(sale price) - contribution(current price)

A negative contribution stays negative. Do not hide it behind a rounded display or a percentage discount. Keep full precision during the calculation and round only the final display values. If you calculate a contribution percentage, state its denominator and how zero denominators are handled.

Worked example

These inputs are fictional. The example assumes EUR selling prices, USD landed costs and 1.08 USD per 1 EUR. It is not a recommended price or a tax calculation.

Current contribution is (40 - 40 × 0.029 - 0.30 - 4) × 1.08 - 13 = 24.3032 USD.

Discount contribution is (26 - 26 × 0.029 - 0.30 - 4) × 1.08 - 13 = 9.62168 USD.

The price falls by 35%, while contribution falls by 14.68152 USD per unit under these assumptions. Recalculate with your actual fee basis, FX date and cost allocations before approving the sale.

Blank worksheet

Copy this heading row into a spreadsheet and keep one row per variant and scenario:

SKU, variant GID, price currency, cost currency, FX, FX source and date, current price, discount price, product cost C, duty D, freight F, insurance/other I, payment rate r, fixed fee k, shipping subsidy S, tax basis, freight allocation basis, current contribution, discount contribution, contribution change, exclusions, reviewer notes

Before locking the discount, check that:

• Duty, FX, freight, insurance and fees are explicit inputs with sources or notes.
• Current and discount prices use the same currency, tax basis and unit quantity.
• Freight and other shared costs have a documented per-unit allocation.
• Empty cells remain unresolved; intended zeroes are entered as zero.
• Negative and near-zero contribution rows have a named reviewer.
• A second person can reproduce the result from the saved inputs and formulas.

The starting observation comes from 695140 post #23: "landed cost doesn't discount along with your sale price". 708800 post #1 discusses freight, duty and insurance allocation and preserving earlier cost layers. Both posts include developer disclosures; neither determines your duty, tax or accounting treatment.

3. Storefront offer and policy consistency audit

Compare pages under the same conditions. A price or policy checked in different markets, currencies, carts or campaign states can look inconsistent without proving a defect.

Fix the test conditions first

Create a condition ID and record:

• Date, time and timezone for the audit run.
• Market or country, currency, language and selected variant.
• Device, viewport, browser and whether the session is signed out or incognito.
• Cart contents, quantities, discount code, gift threshold and shipping destination used for comparisons.
• Campaign start and end settings being tested.

Use that same condition ID on every page row. If a condition changes, start a new run instead of mixing the evidence.

Compare these seven surfaces

Do not treat a possible mismatch as a legal violation. Quote both texts, check the conditions and assign someone to confirm the intended customer-facing rule.

Evidence log

This fictional row shows the expected level of detail:

Run the audit again after corrections and after the campaign ends. Recheck gift products and search snippets because old campaign text can remain after the PDP changes.

The source thread began with a merchant asking what would prevent visitors from adding to cart or checking out. Specific public-page observations include a sale without an end date in post #6, shipping and return-postage conflicts in post #8, stale gift wording and product-data mismatches in post #12, and different shipping and return conditions in post #13. 706450 post #19 reports "Save $-113.89" and a leftover placeholder. These examples guide a manual audit; they do not establish that another store has the same problem today.

Final review boundary

Keep the snapshots, assumptions, URLs, screenshots and recheck results together. Separate an observed value from an interpretation, and an unresolved item from a pass. This guide supports manual operational checks. It does not certify legal compliance, determine customs or tax, or replace review by a qualified adviser.