The vocabulary of margin.
Plain definitions for the terms you'll meet across CM6. For how they fit together, read the CM6 Standard.
Contribution margin (contribution profit)
Net revenue minus the direct, variable costs of trade for an order. The money an order contributes before fixed overhead — and the number CM6 is built around.
CM%
Contribution profit divided by net revenue, expressed as a percentage. Lets you compare margin quality across orders, products and channels of different sizes.
Net revenue
Revenue after discounts, refunds and tax — the genuinely earned top line, not gross sales.
Cost layers
The components of the cost of trade that CM6 stitches onto every order: COGS, fulfilment, payment fees, marketing, customer service, VAT & tax, platform fees, and returns & refunds.
Direct vs. shared costs
Direct costs attach to one order (COGS, payment fees, VAT). Shared costs are real but span many orders (customer service, platform fees, marketing) and are amortised across them.
Amortization
Spreading a shared cost across the orders that generated it, on a rolling basis calibrated to real volumes — rather than applying a flat percentage to everything.
Fallback hierarchy
When a specific cost isn't known, CM6 uses the next most specific value available — for COGS, variant → product → type → brand — so coverage is complete and every fallback is visible.
Cohort
A group of customers who share a starting point — usually the month of their first order — tracked over time to see how their value and margin develop.
Customer LTV
Lifetime value: the contribution a customer generates across all their orders, not just the first. Crucial for judging whether acquisition spend pays back.
Attribution window
The period an ad platform uses to credit a sale to spend. Because windows lag, very recent ad spend and revenue can keep settling for a day or two.
Backfill vs. live sync
Backfill is the one-off load of your order history; live sync keeps new orders flowing in afterwards. Recent orders cost in minutes; full history takes longer.
“Excluding marketing” default
The dashboard shows contribution profit before marketing by default — your product economics — with a toggle to layer ad spend back in for fully-loaded acquisition economics.