## Understanding Alpha Insights

Alpha Insights is a powerful profit tracking plugin designed specifically for WooCommerce store owners who want to understand their store's true profitability. Unlike standard WooCommerce reports that only show revenue, Alpha Insights gives you a complete picture by tracking costs, expenses, and advertising spend alongside your sales. It also allows you to create custom reports to answer your specific business questions.

### What Makes Alpha Insights Different?

Traditional WooCommerce reports tell you how much money you're making, but they don't tell you how much you're actually keeping. Alpha Insights changes that by:

- Tracking Product Costs: Add the cost of goods for each product to see real profit margins
- Monitoring Order Expenses: Track shipping costs, payment gateway fees, and custom order-specific expenses
- Integrating Ad Spend: Connect your Facebook Ads and Google Ads accounts to see advertising costs alongside sales
- Managing Store Expenses: Record fixed costs like rent, utilities, software subscriptions, and employee salaries
- Analyzing Traffic: Understand where your customers come from with built-in website analytics

### How Does It Calculate Profit?

Alpha Insights uses standard accounting formulas to calculate your true profit for each order:

    	Gross Revenue = Revenue before taxes & refunds are subtracted

    	Net Revenue = Gross Revenue - Taxes - Refunds

    	Gross Profit = Net Revenue - (Product Costs + Shipping Costs + Payment Gateway Fees + Custom Order Costs)

    	Gross Profit Margin % = (Gross Profit / Net Revenue) * 100

    	Net Profit = Gross Profit - Operating Expenses

    	Net Profit Margin % = (Net Profit / Net Revenue) * 100

This gives you an accurate, real-time view of your actual profitability, not just your revenue.

### Does It Work For Past Orders?

Yes! One of the most powerful features of Alpha Insights is that it retroactively calculates profit for all your existing orders. When you add product costs or connect your ad accounts, the plugin will automatically recalculate profit for your historical orders, giving you insights from day one.

#### The Three Pillars of Alpha Insights

#### 1. Cost Tracking

Add costs at the product level, order level, or as general store expenses. The plugin tracks:

- Product cost of goods
- Variable product costs (different costs for different variations)
- Shipping and fulfillment costs
- Payment gateway transaction fees
- Custom costs you define
- Operating expenses

#### 2. Report Builder

Create custom reports to answer your specific business questions:

- Which products are most profitable?
- What's my profit margin by traffic source?
- How much did I spend on ads vs. how much profit did I make?
- What's my net profit after all expenses?

#### 3. Integration & Automation

Connect your marketing platforms and let Alpha Insights automatically sync your data:

- Facebook Ads integration for automatic ad spend tracking & campaign performance tracking
- Google Ads integration for search and display campaign costs & campaign performance tracking
- Built-in website analytics to track visitor behavior & conversion tracking
- Webhook support to connect with third-party tools

### What Happens After You Install?

Once you install and activate Alpha Insights, here's what happens:

1. Database Setup: The plugin creates specialized database tables to store profit data efficiently
2. Order Scanning: It scans your existing WooCommerce orders and prepares them for profit calculation
3. Cost Collection: As you add product costs and connect integrations, profit is calculated automatically
4. Real-Time Updates: Every new order is processed immediately, giving you up-to-the-minute profit insights

### Ready to Get Started?

Now that you understand how Alpha Insights works, you're ready to set it up! Follow these steps:

1. Install the plugin on your WordPress site
2. Activate your license key to unlock all features
3. Complete the initial setup by adding costs and connecting integrations
4. View your first profit report and start making data-driven decisions

If you have questions at any point, our support team is here to help!