Skip to main content
Browse topics
Back to Docs

Reading Your Audit

Business Context and Your Economics

How your margins, order values, customer economics, and per-platform targets feed into every audit recommendation.

For · Operators whose audit references margin, AOV, or CPA targets
Time · 5 min read
Next · How Account Sync and Catalyst Audit work together

Your business isn’t generic, so your audit shouldn’t be either. A Catalyst Audit reads your actual margins, order values, and customer economics before writing a single recommendation. Every finding is evaluated against what break-even contribution margin means for your business, not an industry average.

The Short Version

  • Your average order value and gross margin define your break-even point. Catalyst Audit classifies every campaign by contribution margin against that benchmark.
  • COGS (your cost of goods sold) adds precision. SKU-level cost data lets Catalyst Audit report the realized contribution margin per campaign instead of a blended estimate.
  • Realized margin comes from the COGS × Order join on actual transactions. Sale weeks, seasonal mix shifts, and promotional discounts land in that join automatically, with no operator-configured calendar required.
  • Customer lifetime value (CLV) adjusts acquisition targets when your customers return to buy again.
  • Different campaigns can have different CPA and ROAS targets. Brand search and non-brand search don’t play by the same rules.

How Your Economics Shape Every Recommendation

Trellis reads four financial fundamentals before running an audit: average order value (AOV), gross margin, target cost per acquisition (CPA), and target return on ad spend (ROAS). These are the lens through which every audit recommendation is evaluated.

Here’s the math behind it. If your AOV is $50 and your gross margin is 65%, your break-even contribution margin lands at $32.50 per order. A campaign spending more than $32.50 per conversion is below break-even contribution margin on a per-order basis. Your target CPA, say $25, builds in headroom for overhead and operating costs.

Catalyst Audit tests every recommendation against these thresholds. A campaign with a $20 CPA clears break-even comfortably. A campaign at $40 CPA destroys contribution margin on every order. The audit tells you which is which, and what to do about each.

When Margins Aren’t Configured Yet

If you haven’t set a gross margin explicitly, Trellis falls back to a workspace default of 50%. The audit still runs and produces recommendations against that fallback, but the report’s Profitability Analysis section carries a default-margin banner directing you to Settings → Business Profile. Recommendations stay informative; you just want to update the margin and re-run before treating any per-rec dollar projections as final.

How Trellis Resolves Your Margin

Trellis walks a four-step resolution chain when an audit starts. The first step that returns a positive value wins.

StepSourceWhat Catalyst Audit Sees
1. SKU-level COGS catalogLatest successful COGS refresh: either a CSV upload (one-time snapshot) or the monthly Shopify GraphQL syncA blended margin and AOV computed over your full SKU inventory
2. ProductCOGS × Order joinYour order history joined to per-SKU cost on each line item, scoped to the audit windowA revenue-weighted realized margin for the exact period being audited, including any sale-week or seasonal mix shift
3. Per-platform overrideOperator-set gross_margin / aov / target_cpa / target_roas on a specific platform accountA platform-specific margin and target set, overriding the workspace blended values
4. Workspace blended fallbackThe single blended_gross_margin and aov you set in Business ProfileA workspace-wide estimate, used when SKU-level data isn’t available

The more SKU-level cost data you provide, the sharper the picture. At step 2, Catalyst Audit can identify that a campaign generating $5,000 in revenue is below break-even contribution margin because it’s primarily selling low-margin items, something a revenue-only view would miss entirely.

Realized Margin Reflects Real Sales

Ad performance fluctuates with your business calendar. Black Friday margins look different from a quiet February. Catalyst Audit picks that up automatically, not from an operator-configured calendar but from your actual order data.

Step 2 of the margin resolution chain joins your ProductCOGS catalog to the orders that landed in your store during the audit window. When you ran a 20%-off sale, those discounted line items show up at their realized contribution margin. When November’s product mix tilted toward holiday SKUs with different unit costs, that tilt is reflected in the revenue-weighted margin Trellis reports.

The upshot: you don’t need to maintain a separate “promotional calendar” inside Trellis. As long as your COGS catalog is current and your order data has flowed through, the math reflects what actually happened.

Customer Lifetime Value

Not every customer is a one-time buyer. If your repeat purchase rate is meaningful and customers place more than one order, the value of acquiring a new customer is higher than a single order suggests.

When you enable CLV-adjusted targets in Settings → Business Profile, Catalyst Audit recalculates your acceptable acquisition cost using your average order frequency, AOV, blended gross margin, and target LTV:CAC ratio (default 3.0). A $35 CPA might look below break-even against a single-order benchmark of $32.50, but it clears contribution margin once the expected repeat orders are factored in.

CLV adjustment is optional and off by default. It draws on order history data computed from your store’s transaction records, so it requires Shopify orders to have flowed through into Trellis.

Per-Campaign Targets

A branded search campaign and a prospecting campaign serve different purposes and have different economics. Catalyst Audit supports per-campaign-type CPA and ROAS targets so each campaign is evaluated against the right benchmark.

You can configure target CPA and ROAS at the campaign-type level. Brand search might target a $10 CPA (because brand traffic converts cheaply), while non-brand search targets $30 CPA. Shopping campaigns might use ROAS as the primary metric instead of CPA. Each campaign’s performance is judged against its own target, not a single global number.

This prevents the common trap where a blended CPA looks healthy but hides an underperforming campaign that’s dragging down the whole account.

What Catalyst Audit Doesn’t Do

Catalyst Audit reads the business context you provide. It does not independently verify that your margins are accurate or that your AOV reflects current pricing. The audit is only as sharp as the economics you give it.

Two safeguards do contextualize the inputs:

  • COGS freshness. When your latest Shopify COGS refresh is more than 90 days old, the audit proceeds but the report surfaces a freshness note. A one-time CSV upload is exempt from this; Trellis treats it as a snapshot you’ve chosen to persist.
  • Default-margin banner. When the audit runs against the 50% workspace default (because no margin was set explicitly), the Profitability Analysis section carries a banner pointing you to Settings.

Keeping your business profile current (accurate margin, fresh COGS catalog, configured CPA/ROAS targets) keeps the audit’s recommendations anchored to your actual state.

What’s Next