Finishing your Margins setup checklist

Finish setup is your setup checklist in Margins, Finaloop's performance analytics product, and it's where your data goes from connected to trustworthy. Margins imports everything it can from your connected accounts, then collects the handful of things it couldn't work out by itself, like an uncategorized transaction, a product with no cost, a login that expired, and puts them in one list with a time estimate on each.

Most of them take 3 to 5 minutes. Clearing them is what moves your Data accuracy score, and it's the difference between a dashboard that looks plausible and one you'd make a reorder decision from.

Finish setup is a first-run checklist. It leaves the sidebar once all three of these are true: at least 7 days have passed since you finished connecting your apps, every item is completed or skipped, and at least one app is connected. This article covers the three stages of Finish setup, how to clear each kind of review item, and what your accuracy score means.

Your first sync needs to have run. If you've just connected your accounts, give it a few hours, or up to 24 hours if you have a lot of history. Until then, the top of Finish setup shows We're building your insights and Ready in ~24 hrs. See Getting started with Margins.

Click Finish setup in the left sidebar. The badge on it is your number of open items. Each stage shows Pending, Done or its number of open items next to its name.

Open Customize your data. Under Items to review you'll see one card per item, each with a status (Open or Partially completed) and a time estimate, such as ~ 5 min.

Every item works the same way:

When an item is done, it shows Completed and the badge on Finish setup drops by one.

The item list is generated from your own account, so yours won't match anyone else's. These are the ones most people see.

Margins categorizes the large majority of your transactions automatically and asks you about the rest, usually the ones with an unhelpful bank descriptor or unknown payees. The item tells you how far it got, for example "Margins categorized 92% of your transactions." Uncategorized spend doesn't disappear from your numbers; it sits in the wrong place, which quietly distorts your profit.

Click Review open transactions to open Transactions, grouped by vendor. See Categorizing & reviewing transactions.

Margins syncs Shopify costs automatically; add other channels' costs by CSV or directly. A product without a cost per unit books $0 of cost of goods sold (COGS), so it shows a 100% margin.

The expanded item names the count, for example "12 products don't have a cost yet.", and your three options:

Click Add missing costs to open the product costs view in Products.

We recommend you clear this one first. Every other number on your dashboard is downstream of it, and a missing cost doesn't look like an error, it looks like your best-performing product. See Adding your cost per unit in Margins.

Margins found activity from something you haven't connected, like a payout from a channel it can't see, or spend on a card it doesn't have. It flags it rather than leaving a hole in your numbers.

Click Show details to see where it was detected, then click Connect next to the app to connect it right from the item.

A connection has expired and stopped importing. This is normal, banks and ad platforms expire authorizations on their own schedule, and it says nothing about your account.

Click Reconnect next to each account and sign in again. The account then shows Connected (banks and cards) or Reconnected (ad accounts). Reconnecting picks up everything from the gap, so reconnect as soon as you see the item.

You may also see Connect your stores, Connect your banks, Connect Claude or other AI tools, Merge duplicate products, Confirm how Shopify channels should be counted, Review unmatched money movements and Connect missing bank accounts.

The card at the top of Customize your data shows your score as a bar running from Good to Excellent, with a one-word verdict above it, for example Data accuracy is strong. Click the information icon beside it for the scale.

Your score reflects how complete and accurate your data is, not how much you've used Margins.

The simple way to think about it: the score is a summary of the list underneath it. Three or more open items reads Strong, one or two reads Advanced, and none reads Excellent. Skipped items count as done. Clear items, it goes up. Let a bank connection expire, it goes down.

Once you customize your data, open Explore your business. It says Your data is ready.

Two things worth doing at that point:

No. You can use Margins with items outstanding. Each item you clear makes your numbers more accurate.

It marks the item Skipped without changing your data, and counts it as done for your score. Use it when the item doesn't apply to your business. Click Undo to bring it back.

Almost always an expired connection. Banks and ad platforms end authorizations on their own schedule, and when one stops importing your data is less complete than it was. Check Items to review for a reconnect item.

Each card shows its own estimate, and most are 3 to 5 minutes. Add missing product costs is the one that can take longer, because it depends on how many products you sell and whether you have your costs to hand.

Yes, and that's the point. Adding a cost per unit recalculates COGS from that cost's start date forward, so months you've already looked at can change. That's your numbers getting more accurate, not less stable.

It leaves the sidebar once at least 7 days have passed since you finished connecting your apps, every item is completed or skipped, and at least one app is connected. You can still add connections any time from Integrations in the left sidebar.

Email us at [email protected] and we'll help you finish setting up.