Shipping Costs Explained

Setting Up and Calculating Shipping Costs in Lifetimely

To accommodate the different factors that play into your orders' shipping costs, there are multiple ways these costs can be entered or integrated into Lifetimely. You can:

• Integrate ShipStation, ShipBob, or Shopify Shipping accounts that automatically import your shipping costs to Lifetimely.
• Set shipping costs equal to Shipping Charged (what your customers pay for shipping).
• Integrate a Google Sheet that matches shipping costs to specific Order IDs.
• Upload a CSV file that matches shipping costs to specific Order IDs.
• Set specific shipping rates for individual products.
• Set flat shipping rates based on the country you ship to.

This article explains the calculation logic behind how we decide on the shipping costs to apply to your orders.

⚠️ Note: Shipping costs here mean what you paid to your shipping provider. Shopify maintains separate calculations of customer shipping costs, which they label “shipping charged.”

💡 Tip: For a step-by-step guide to setting up your shipping costs, check out our Account Setup Walkthrough.

Shipping Cost Calculation Logic

Here’s a quick summary of how Lifetimely makes a final determination on shipping costs when one or more settings are applied:

• Priority 1: Integrations with Shopify Shipping, ShipStation, or ShipBob
• Priority 2: Shipping Charged when "Use Shipping Charged" is selected
• Priority 3: Imports from Google Sheets and/or CSV files
• Priority 4: Product-specific shipping costs entered in the Product Costs tab
• Priority 5: Country-level shipping rates

Now let’s take a closer look at each of these options with specifics on how calculation logic is applied.

How shipping cost CSV syncs work

When you sync shipping costs into Lifetimely via Google Sheets, those costs are processed sequentially, one row at a time.

Once a shipping cost is synced for an order:

• That value is stored in Lifetimely
• Edits made later to the same row are not re-processed
• Lifetimely only looks at new rows added after the last synced row

Because of this, shipping costs should be considered final at the time they are imported.

Can I update a shipping cost after it’s been imported?

In most cases, we recommend not updating order-level shipping costs after import.

If shipping costs may change later (for example, due to replacement shipments or reships), the best practice is to:

• Add the additional cost as a separate custom cost (one-time or monthly), rather than modifying the original order’s shipping cost

This approach is more predictable and avoids confusion in reporting.

Advanced: overwriting an existing shipping cost (use sparingly)

It is possible to overwrite a previously imported shipping cost, but this requires a specific approach:

• Do not edit the original row

  Instead, add a new row to the sheet with:

  • The same order ID
  • The updated shipping cost

When Lifetimely processes this new row, it will overwrite the previous shipping cost for that order.

Best practices

• Only import shipping costs once they are finalized
• Use separate custom costs for post-order adjustments (reships, replacements, corrections)
• Avoid relying on “re-syncing” or editing past rows - Lifetimely does not re-process historical rows automatically

💡 Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: How can we ensure that uploaded shipping cost data takes priority over other sources?

Shipping cost priority is outlined above. In short, manually uploaded shipping costs will override lower-priority sources (like default estimates) as long as the Order ID matches.

Q2: What happens if an order has multiple shipping labels (e.g., split shipments)?

Currently, Lifetimely does not support split shipments. If your upload includes separate shipping cost rows with modified order IDs (e.g., #1232-1, #1232-2), they won’t match and therefore won’t be captured or summed together. You'll need to consolidate the cost manually under the original Order ID before uploading.

Q3: Can I compare shipping costs before and after uploading?

Yes - the simplest method is to download the Income Statement before your upload and compare the Shipping row under COGS after the update. This lets you quickly see any changes from the import.

📌 Platform-Specific Notes

• Amazon: Currently, Amazon integrations in Lifetimely only support:
  • Shipping Charged (what the customer paid for shipping), and

  • Country-Level Shipping (aggregated costs by destination country).

    Other shipping cost methods (e.g., per-product, CSV uploads, ShipStation/ShipBob integrations) are not supported for Amazon.