Getting started with Margins

Margins, Finaloop's performance analytics product, pulls together everything you sell through and everything you spend on, reconciles it against your banks and payouts, and turns it into numbers you can question, chart, and share.

That reconciliation is the point. Most AI tools answer from whatever you paste into them, which means the answer is only as good as the file you happened to grab. Margins answers from your live data, tied back to your sources of truth, so when it tells you a SKU is losing money on TikTok, that's a number you can act on rather than one you have to go check.

Setup is one pass: create your account, connect your accounts, and let the first sync run. From there Margins keeps itself current. Margins is free for up to 3 users, with no time limit and no credit card.

This article covers the whole thing: creating your account, connecting your data, finishing setup, getting your first answers, and the two habits that keep your numbers right after week one.

Margins asks three quick questions first so your workspace is set up for the way you actually sell.

You'll land straight in the connection wizard. That's your workspace created.

The wizard walks you through five groups of connections in order, and shows your progress across the top: Stores, Billing & Payments, Advertising Platforms, Backoffice & EDI (EDI is electronic data interchange), and Banks & Cards.

Each group answers a different question about your business. Margins connects to stores such as Amazon, Shopify, TikTok Shop, WooCommerce, eBay, Etsy and Walmart; payment platforms such as Shop Pay, PayPal, Stripe, Afterpay, Klarna and Affirm; Meta, Google Ads and Amazon Ads; backoffice apps such as Bill.com, Gusto, QuickBooks and Ramp; and banks and cards such as Chase, American Express, Capital One, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Mercury.

To connect one, click its card and sign in to that platform when it opens. Then:

Click Next through each group, and Skip past anything you don't use. Nothing here is permanent: you can add or remove a channel any time from Integrations in the left sidebar, and a bank or card from Settings → Banks & Credit Cards.

Connecting isn't the same as finishing. The more you connect, the more complete your margins become. If your ad spend runs through an account you skipped, your margins will look better than they are, so it's worth connecting everything in one sitting rather than adding things piecemeal.

When you finish the wizard you'll see We have started syncing your data. Margins is pulling your history from every account you connected and building your dashboard from it.

This usually takes a few hours, and up to 24 hours if you have a lot of history. You don't need to stay on the page, refresh, or start over. Sections marked Syncing fill themselves in.

Click See my dashboard to go in and look around while it runs. Numbers will be partial until the sync completes, which is expected.

If you skipped every connection, you'll see Your workspace is set up, now let's bring it to life. instead. Your dashboard stays empty until you connect something from Integrations.

Once your data has landed, Finish setup in the left sidebar is where you get your data from "connected" to "trustworthy." It's your setup checklist, with three stages and a Data accuracy meter that runs from Good to Excellent. While your first sync runs, the top of the page shows We're building your insights with Ready in ~24 hrs instead of the meter.

Confirms your connections are in and importing. When it's done you'll see Your apps are connected! and a Connected integrations list, with a Settings link to connect more. If Margins spots activity from an app you haven't connected, like a payout from a channel it can't see, or a card it doesn't have, it flags it in Customize your data rather than quietly leaving a hole in your numbers.

This is the stage that moves the meter. Items to review lists the things Margins couldn't confirm on its own, each with an honest time estimate, most are 3 to 5 minutes. Typical items:

We recommend you clear Add missing product costs before you spend much time in the dashboards. A product with no cost per unit shows a 100% margin, which will make your best-looking SKU the one you know least about.

Your score runs Good → Strong → Advanced → Excellent, and it reflects how complete and accurate your data is rather than how much you've used Margins. Click the information icon on the card for the full scale. See Finishing your Margins setup checklist.

This stage says Your data is ready and offers two ways in: Explore Dashboards and Connect MCP (MCP is Model Context Protocol, a secure connection between Margins and AI tools such as Claude and ChatGPT).

There are three ways to ask Margins something, and most people end up using all three.

Dashboard in the sidebar opens on Home, with Lifetime value, Spend analysis, and SKU analysis beside it. Your dashboard may not show all four of these tabs: SKU analysis appears once you connect Shopify, TikTok Shop, Amazon or Walmart, or have products in Margins. Set Period and Compared to at the top and everything on the tab moves together. Alongside your own numbers you'll see peer comparisons (Peer growth) next to your growth, Peers AOV next to your average order value, so a good month has context.

To look up what any number means, see What each number on the Dashboard means and Customer lifetime value (LTV).

Ask AI, at the top right of the dashboard, connects Margins to Claude, ChatGPT, or another AI tool through the Margins MCP, so you can work with your numbers in the chat you already have open. Until you're connected, it shows First: connect your AI tools with a Connect button. AI Tools in the sidebar shows your connection status and starter prompts. This is worth doing early, it's the fastest route from "the data is in" to "the data is useful," and it's how most people build custom reports and dashboards without building anything. See Connect Margins to your AI tools.

Three questions worth asking first:

Connect your Margins data to a workflow tool like Claude Scheduled, n8n, or Zapier and build custom workflows like automated Slack alerts or email summaries, or build custom dashboards that track the metrics that mean the most for your business.

Margins keeps your connections syncing on its own. Two things stay yours, and both take minutes rather than hours.

Keep your transactions categorized. Margins categorizes most of what comes through automatically and leaves the rest for you. Anything it couldn't place shows up in Transactions. Left alone, uncategorized spend quietly distorts your profit and your peer comparisons.

Keep your product costs current. When a vendor price changes, either add the new cost in Products with the date it starts applying, or update it in Shopify and Margins syncs it automatically. Margins keeps the old cost for the units that sold under it, so your history stays right.

As more data lands, more of Margins turns on: peer benchmarks get sharper, period-over-period comparisons get real, and the SKU-level margins that were noisy in week one settle down.

No. Every connection is read-only. Margins reads your transactions, orders, and spend, and can't move funds, place orders, or edit anything on the platforms you connect. If you connect an AI tool through the Margins MCP, it can create, categorize and send bills and invoices in Margins when you ask it to.

It's free for up to 3 users, with no time limit and no credit card. Larger setups requiring multiple brands in one workspace, or unlimited users, are covered by Margins Enterprise.

Usually a few hours, and up to 24 hours if you have a lot of history. Sections marked Syncing fill in on their own.

No, but the numbers are only as complete as the connections behind them. Skipping your ad accounts means your margins won't include ad spend, and skipping a bank means that spend is invisible. Connect what's material to your business.

That connection needs re-authorizing, usually because the platform expired the login. Click the card and sign in again, either in the wizard or later in Integrations in the left sidebar (the same page as Settings → Integrations).

Yes. Go to Integrations in the left sidebar (or Settings → Integrations) for stores, payment platforms, ad platforms, and backoffice apps, or Settings → Banks & Credit Cards for bank and card accounts. Both show the same cards and badges as the wizard.

Almost always missing cost per unit. A product with no cost books $0 of COGS, so it shows a 100% margin. Finish setup flags this as Add missing product costs. See Why are my products missing cost per unit in Margins?.

Email us at [email protected] and we'll help you get set up.