Establish a trustworthy margin baseline

A margin baseline is the agreement between finance and marketplace ops about which SKUs have trustworthy landed cost, which fee lines are provisional, and what "good enough" means for daily decisions. Without that agreement, P&L becomes a Rorschach test every Monday.

Start by listing hero SKUs: top 20% revenue, top ad spend, and strategic launches in the last 90 days. Finance supplies COGS and inbound freight assumptions; ops confirms SKU-to-offer mapping on Bol, Kaufland, and Pigu connections. Import costs in-app, then validate waterfalls on a closed week in P&L visibility.

Document explicit gaps. If 40% of long-tail SKUs lack COGS, say so internally and filter P&L views to covered assortment for executive readouts until coverage improves. Marktspan's missing-cost signals exist to prevent silent zeros—do not hide them to make charts pretty.

Align fee timing with your close calendar. Marketplace invoices may post after orders; accounting modules may show fees Pulse already attributed. Finance should publish a one-page "how we read Marktspan margin" note referencing Monthly marketplace finance check.

Once baseline coverage hits your threshold—often 80% of revenue on heroes—turn on pricing and ad guardrails that reference contribution. Ad Pilot on Bol without baseline margin is how teams optimize themselves into unprofitable rank. Revisit baseline quarterly or when FX, incoterms, or 3PL contracts change.

Public readers can pair this use case with P&L visibility; signed-in operators can dig into missing-cost checklists via Get Help → Documentation.

Where to go next in the docs

Stay on this public guide for outcomes and rollout planning. For click-by-click operator procedures, sign in and open Get Help → Documentation. Evaluation teams should skim the FAQ, then Plans, billing, and getting help or Pricing before you commit production credentials.

When to call this use case done

Treat the playbook as complete when your team repeats the outputs in a weekly forum without exporting ad-hoc spreadsheets—usually within two weeks of a healthy first sync. If numbers look empty or stale, pause process changes and fix connection health first; process cannot compensate for missing data.

Honest marketplace scope

Live seller operations emphasize Bol.com, Kaufland, and Pigu (PHH Group) today. Mirakl remains connect-first until your rollout confirms ingest for your operator. Ad Pilot applies to Bol Sponsored Products only; Pigu advertising uses Martailer separately from Ad Pilot. Retailers shown as coming soon on marketing surfaces are not described here as shipped product.