FAQ

Questions we get asked

Explore frequently asked questions about Profitscaler covering integrations, pricing, security and more.

General

General

What is Profitscaler?

Profitscaler calculates the true profit of every order, after cost of goods, VAT, shipping, payment fees and handling, and sends it to the ad and reporting tools e-commerce stores use.

Your server-side container asks us what an order was worth at the moment it happens, and we answer in the few hundred milliseconds it is willing to wait. The number goes to ad platforms like Google Ads, analytics like GA4 as a value on the event, and to your own reporting as a CSV export.

Who is it for?

Profitscaler is for e-commerce stores that run server-side tracking. Both online retailers and D2C brands are supported.

If you have neither a server-side container nor any idea of your margins, then Profitscaler is not for you just yet. If all you're missing is server-side tracking, reach out to us and we'll help you get started through our agency business Nordscale.

Do I have to bid on profit to use this?

No, profit bidding is not required. Profitscaler measures profit whether or not you bid on it, and we would rather you decided the bidding question after seeing your own numbers.

Measuring honestly and choosing what to bid on are two separate decisions. Sending profit straight in as conversion value is right for some stores and wrong for others.

Does this replace my analytics or reporting?

No. Profitscaler enhances your existing stack instead of replacing them. Profit goes into the tools you already use: Google Ads, GA4, Merchant Center and your own BI tool.

Profitscaler does have an overview with a dashboard which is helpful for some, but for advanced users automated data exports will be the primary reporting workflow.

Do I have to change my website or checkout?

No. Profitscaler changes nothing on your website or checkout, because everything happens server-side, after the purchase event has already left the browser. There is no script to add to your storefront, no checkout change, and nothing that can slow a page down or break at a theme update.

Who is behind Profitscaler?

Profitscaler is built by Nordscale, a Swedish performance marketing agency. The two brands trade under the same legal entity but are otherwise kept separate.

Getting started

Getting started

What do I need before I can start?

Profitscaler needs two things before you start: a server-side GTM container you can give access to, and a product feed.

The server container is a hard requirement. It is what turns a purchase into a server-to-server request carrying line items, and nothing works without it. The feed is where your costs come from.

Other tools allow client-side installations, but to ensure security Profitscaler is only available server-side.

What if my feed has no cost prices per product?

A feed with no cost prices does not stop you. Many retailers don't have product costs in their feed, but nearly all know that one brand runs about 33% and another about 45%. You can state a margin per brand or category and Profitscaler works the cost back from it.

It's not as accurate as exact COGS numbers, but it's far better than nothing and a good starting point. A store priced this way is a regular client on the same pricing, not a discounted tier.

What if my costs only cover part of the catalogue?

Partial cost coverage is common, and workable. Profitscaler shows you the coverage before you commit: how many SKUs can be priced and which cannot. You set a fallback margin so unknown products get a sensible estimate instead of a fake 100% margin, so you can fill in real costs over time.

How long does setup take?

Profitscaler setup takes a few hours of work if you already have a server-side container and cost prices in your feed. Validation time depends on how many orders you get per day. The free trial offers 500 orders for free which usually is more than enough for data validation.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. Your first 500 orders on Profitscaler are free with no card required. There is no clock on it. A usage-bounded trial is the fair shape here, because the slowest part of setup is the container, and a ticking countdown would punish whoever takes three weeks to wire one up.

The 500 orders are per account, not per store, so a brand selling in six markets gets 500 in total rather than 500 each.

Can my agency or a developer set this up for me?

Yes. An agency can be attached to your Profitscaler account. You grant access separately, and you can withdraw it. Implementation work, feed building and profit-based campaign strategy are offered separately by Nordscale.

Pricing & billing

Pricing & billing

What does Profitscaler cost?

Profitscaler is priced based on order volume, from €85 a month at 500 orders to €1,000 at 100,000, and everything is included at every step. No percentage of spend, no seats, no setup fee, no feature gates.

Each step states one number, the price per order, and it falls as you go up, from €0.17 to €0.01. Paid annually, which is two months free, the same steps work out to an effective €0.1417 down to €0.0083 an order. Above 100,000 orders a month, talk to us. Prices are EUR excluding VAT.

What happens if I go over my order allowance?

Going over your allowance stops nothing, and the cost per order remains the same. Extra orders bill at your step's own stated price per order, in blocks of 10% of your step's volume: 50 orders at a time on the 500 step, 1,000 at a time on the 10,000 step.

What is included at each step?

Every Profitscaler step includes everything: profit to Google Ads and GA4, the projected-margin bucket feed for Merchant Center, margin per SKU, per-carrier shipping, kickbacks, extra costs per order, item and row, the reporting feed, and per-client rotatable keys. The slider moves one variable, and it is volume.

Implementation consultancy, feed building and campaign strategy are Nordscale services handled separately.

When am I first charged, and can I cancel?

The 500 order trial is completely free of charge. Profitscaler charges nothing until you activate your subscription.

Monthly with 30 days' notice, or annual for two months free.

What if my orders drop, or I have slow months?

You keep any unused orders for the entire length of your subscription. So a quiet month pays for a busier one later. Every month adds your step's allowance, and every tracked order draws it down.

On annual billing you're granted the whole year upfront as one pool. Annual also grants two months allowance for free. You can move down a step at any month boundary and the bank you have already built remains.

What do the extra markets or domains cost?

Nothing. Profitscaler charges no per-domain fee. One account is one brand and the markets it sells in, and all of them draw on the same shared bank, so their busy seasons cancel each other out instead of each being billed separately. Opening your next market costs zero.

Integrations

Integrations

What does Profitscaler connect to?

Profitscaler takes the order event in through your server-side GTM container. The profit value goes out to any ad platform as conversion value and to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) as an event parameter and custom metric. Your cost data can come from a feed tool like Channable, or from a spreadsheet you publish. Everything else, order and product level profit, is a CSV over HTTPS that any BI tool can read.

What actually changes in my Google Ads account?

Less changes in your Google Ads account than you would expect, and nothing without your permission. Profitscaler recommends running profit in parallel with your existing revenue tracking first: same orders, both numbers, side by side, so you can see what the honest figure looks like before switching to profit bidding.

If the answer turns out to be "keep bidding on revenue and fix the cost feed instead", that is a valid result.

Do I have to use a particular server-side hosting provider?

No. Profitscaler works identically on any sGTM host: Taggrs, Stape, Google Cloud Run, or one you run yourself. Nothing in the product talks to a hosting vendor's API, and we have no preference to sell you. What matters is that the container exists and can reach us.

Can I get the raw numbers into my own reporting?

Yes. Profitscaler serves two exports, one at order level and one at product level, as CSV over HTTPS. Anything that can read a URL on a schedule can consume them: BI tools, a Google Sheet, or a data warehouse.

Each export URL carries its own key, separate from every other key on your account, and it is rotatable in minutes.

Do you work with Shopify, WooCommerce or my platform?

The platform is not really the question. Profitscaler sits behind your server-side container, so what matters is that the container fires a purchase event with line items and that you have a product feed. Both are true on every major platform.

What happens to everything if I leave?

Everything keeps working when you leave Profitscaler. Your container, your Google Ads conversion action, your GA4 setup and your feed are all yours and all stay. There is no proprietary pixel to remove, no portal to be locked out of, and no data held back. What stops is the profit value being enriched, not your other tracking.

Data & accuracy

Data & accuracy

What is actually taken out of the order value?

Profitscaler takes cost of goods, VAT, shipping, payment fees and extra costs like handling out of the order value. Shipping is the real carrier rate where you have one rather than a flat average. Handling can be charged per order, item and per row. Supplier rebates are added back where they apply, and you can add your own costs per order, per item or per row.

It is calculated per line item and the order's profit is the sum of the lines, not a separate order-level calculation that happens to be close. The two reconcile exactly, down to the last cent.

Does the profit figure account for returns?

No, and this is the most important limitation to know about. The order event fires at purchase; the return happens weeks later. So every margin figure Profitscaler produces is a best case.

How accurate is a stated margin compared to real cost prices?

A stated margin is less accurate than real cost prices in one specific way worth knowing before you rely on it. It is per brand or category, so it cannot see that one product in that brand sells at half the margin of the rest. Your bidding gets the brand's average rather than the product's truth.

For a catalogue where margin varies sharply within a brand, real costs are the only honest answer. Stated margins widen who can use Profitscaler; they do not make the resulting numbers as good.

Your numbers do not match my other reporting. Which is right?

Often both are right, measuring different things, and the differences between Profitscaler and your other tool are predictable enough to list in advance:

  • VAT. Whether revenue is sent including or excluding VAT changes everything downstream.

  • Shipping. A per-carrier rate and a flat average will not agree.

  • Products missing from your feed, which fall back to your stated margin here.

  • Attribution. Your analytics tool may attribute orders differently from our method.

If a difference is not one of those four, we want to hear about it.

How fresh is the data?

Profitscaler calculates the profit value at the moment of purchase, inside the time your container is willing to wait. Cost prices come from your feed on a nightly sync, so a cost you change today is in tomorrow's orders.

The Profitscaler dashboard is faster than the free version of GA4 that can have data delays for hours and channel attribution that can take days.

What happens if Profitscaler is unreachable?

If Profitscaler is unreachable, your container falls back to an estimated value, so a conversion is never lost. It becomes an estimate for that period rather than a measurement, and your own order records are unaffected.

We monitor the service and we intend to offer an SLA, but we do not have one today and will not imply otherwise.

Security & privacy

Security & privacy

Who can see my cost prices?

Nobody in another Profitscaler account can see your cost prices. Our own staff access sits above that boundary rather than inside it.

Do you receive my customers' personal data?

No. Profitscaler never receives your customers' personal data. An order reaching us carries the order number, what was paid, the line items, VAT, currency, and Google's own advertising and analytics identifiers. That is the whole list. There is no field for a name, email, address or phone number, and nothing to put one in.

The Google identifiers are pseudonymous and are erased after 90 days.

Where is my data hosted?

In the EU. Profitscaler keeps the database, your costs, your orders and the application in Stockholm. Nordscale Strategies AB is a Swedish company under Swedish law.

Some providers are US companies and we would rather say so here than have it found: our hosting provider is US-incorporated although the infrastructure it runs for us is in Stockholm, and Google receives conversion values in the US, which is the point of the product and would happen with or without us.

Can anyone read my margins by opening my tag container?

No. Profitscaler calculates profit server-side, and nothing about your costs is present in anything a browser can see. Your container holds a key that asks us a question; it does not hold your cost data.

Each account has its own keys, separate per purpose, and you can rotate any of them yourself in minutes.

Do you have SOC 2 or ISO 27001?

No. Profitscaler holds neither SOC 2 nor ISO 27001. We are a small Swedish company and have not been audited against either. If your procurement process requires one, we are not a fit yet, and it is better that you find that out here than three meetings in.

Can I get my data out, or have it deleted?

Both. Your Profitscaler reporting data is available as an export for as long as you subscribe, and during the free trial. Deletion is on request when you leave. Your rights over the personal data we hold about you are in the privacy policy, along with the retention period for every category of data we store.

Find out what your orders are actually worth

Track 500 orders for free. No credit card required.

Built by people who actually run ads for a living.

Profitscaler calculates the true profit of every order server-side, after cost of goods, VAT, shipping, payment fees and handling, and sends it to the ad and reporting tools an e-commerce store or its agency already runs.

© 2026 Nordscale Strategies AB. Made with ❤️ in Sweden.

Find out what your orders are actually worth

Track 500 orders for free. No credit card required.

Built by people who actually run ads for a living.

Profitscaler calculates the true profit of every order server-side, after cost of goods, VAT, shipping, payment fees and handling, and sends it to the ad and reporting tools an e-commerce store or its agency already runs.

© 2026 Nordscale Strategies AB. Made with ❤️ in Sweden.

Find out what your orders are actually worth

Track 500 orders for free. No credit card required.

Built by people who actually run ads for a living.

Profitscaler calculates the true profit of every order server-side, after cost of goods, VAT, shipping, payment fees and handling, and sends it to the ad and reporting tools an e-commerce store or its agency already runs.

© 2026 Nordscale Strategies AB. Made with ❤️ in Sweden.