What are Custom Expenses?
For most DTC businesses, ad-spend is a huge component of overall spending, but it’s certainly not the full picture. Most DTC businesses have a myriad of other expenses that cannot be tracked via API, and all too often, the only tool available for tracking those expenses is a spreadsheet. The Custom Expenses feature of Triple Whale was created to eliminate the need for such spreadsheets.
What kinds of expenses can I model with Custom Expenses?
You can use Custom Expenses to model fixed expenses as well as variable expenses.
You can add expenses manually, from the Custom expenses page.
For Fixed expenses, you can sync via Google sheet.
Variable expenses are used to model costs that are a function of your ad spend.
Fixed expenses are used to model the cost of everything and anything else.
Both types of Custom Expenses can have a start date and end date, and fixed expenses can be set to recur at any cadence you choose (based on days or months):
If you mark a Custom Expense as Ad Spend then the amount of the expense will be added to your other advertising spends for purposes of calculating metrics like ROAS and MER:
You can assign a category to any custom expense. By default, your list of categories will be empty, but you can easily create categories on the fly.
Syncing Custom Expenses via Sheets:
On the custom expenses page, click ‘Import Custom Expenses from Google Sheets’.
If your Google account is not yet connected to Triple Whale, you will need to connect.
Once connected, you can ‘Create Google Sheet’
A sheet will be created, which is your shops’ unique sheet for entering your custom expense. It will include all of your existing fixed custom expenses already, so you can edit everything within the sheet. This sheet is synced once per day (at the same hour the sheet was initially created), but you can also sync whenever you want by clicking ‘Sync Now’.
Columns in the sheet (here’s a link to a sample sheet):
ID - user should leave this blank, it is populated by Triple Whale app)
Title
Cost (in your shops’ currency)
Category (Optional, this is case sensitive)
Start Date (YYYY-MM-DD)
End Date (YYYY-MM-DD)
Recurring (Y/N) - user must input yes or no, or will receive an error
Recurring interval (day/month) - user only needs to add if they marked ‘Recurring’ as Y.
Recurring interval frequency - user only needs to add if they marked ‘Recurring’ as Y.
Ad Spend (Y/N) - user must input yes or no, or will receive an error
Dropdown list to choose your Pixel sources (when you create an ad spend custom expense)
Editing the sheet:
There is 1 sheet per shop. So if John creates the sheet, it will appear in Triple Whale when Jane accesses the Triple Whale account. If John wants Jane to see or edit the sheet, he should share it with her.
As you add expenses to the sheet, they will get imported to Triple Whale.
If you delete a row from the sheet, that WILL NOT delete the expense from Triple Whale. If you want to delete an expense, you must delete the expense from the application.
If you edit a row from the sheet, that WILL NOT edit the expense from Triple Whale. If you want to edit an expense, you must edit the expense in the application.
If you add identical expenses through the application and within the Triple Whale app, you will have duplicates. We recommend adding fixed expenses through either the application or through the sheets sync, not both.
Furthermore, you can access a breakdown of custom expenses from the Summary page by clicking on your Custom Expenses tile (currently only available in the old design).
On the Custom Expenses page, expenses will be grouped according to the category, and you can filter the contents of the Custom Expenses page by status. Expenses are considered active if their start date is in the past and their end date is in the future.
In addition, you can conveniently see the effective daily rate of each custom expense based on the parameters you’ve established.
Finally, all edits to Custom Expenses are now being tracked to your activity feed.
Where do Custom Expenses show up?
Custom Expenses are shown on the Custom Expenses page as well as the Summary page. Within the Summary Page, Custom Expenses are represented in a dedicated tile (see below). In addition, the value of your Custom Expenses are also reflected in the value of other tiles, such as Net Profit.
Can I edit or delete Custom Expenses?
You can easily edit or delete Custom Expenses. Please note that both operations (editing or deleting) will impact past, present, and future data.
When are Custom Expenses recognized?
Variable expenses are recognized in real-time (e.g., as your spending increases)
For fixed expenses, there are three options. which you can choose to apply to all your custom expenses at the top of the page:
Daily: Expenses are recognized at the beginning of each day (e.g., all of your fixed expenses for each day are recognized in full at 12:00 AM in your store’s local time zone). If you have a fixed expense that spans multiple days (based on the start and end date that you have specified), the expense will accrue evenly across the days.
Hourly: 1/24 of a daily expense is recognized every hour.
Smart Distribution: Expenses are recognized at the average rate of sales per hour over the last 90 days.
Here is the video from our previous release
Triple Whale is all over social media! Here are a couple of places you can find us:
🦄 Join our Slack community, Narwhal Nation: This is where our awesome community comes together. Experts in the field exchange insights and collaborate on the future of eCom.
📺 Check out our Podcasts: Our YouTube channel is jam-packed with awesome podcasts, product tutorials, and biz insights -- or stream our episodes wherever you listen to great content.
🐦 Follow us on Twitter: We love the bird app and we love having over 8k of you wonderful peeps following our main account.