Discounts can increase sales while leaving too little revenue to cover product cost. MarginBeacon helps WooCommerce merchants evaluate gross product margin risk for a selected native coupon against current regular or active sale prices, then review risk on supported promotional orders.<\/p>\n\n
Set up product costs, run a preflight for a selected native WooCommerce coupon, and review clear severity levels with reasons. MarginBeacon is watch-only: it reports risk without creating discounts, changing coupons, modifying checkout, or editing original order data.<\/p>\n\n
MarginBeacon Free provides the merchant baseline: cost setup and coverage, unlimited manual selected-coupon preflights, one global threshold profile, promotion-related order risk, bounded Recent Orders Preview, and basic health tools.<\/p>\n\n
For fixed-cart coupons, Free evaluates deterministic single-line scenarios at quantity 1 for each eligible target. It does not build a representative multi-line basket.<\/p>\n\n
The optional MarginBeacon Pro companion adds deeper operational coverage, including full, scheduled, and targeted scans; representative multi-line fixed-cart baskets; category-level controls; advanced evidence, filtering, exports, and diagnostics; baseline-order monitoring; advanced recalculation controls; and merchant-facing Price History. Free functionality remains available without Pro.<\/p>\n\n
MarginBeacon requires:<\/p>\n\n
The PHP BCMath extension is required for exact money calculations. If BCMath is unavailable, MarginBeacon will remain inactive and display an administrator notice instead of running financial calculations with reduced precision.<\/p>\n\n
Read the MarginBeacon documentation<\/a> or ask a question in the WordPress.org support forum<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n No. MarginBeacon is watch-only. It does not create, edit, apply, disable, or enforce coupons, and it does not change cart totals or block checkout.<\/p><\/dd>\n Unknown means MarginBeacon does not have enough reliable evidence to classify the result as Safe, Warning, High, or Critical. Common causes include missing cost, incomplete currency or totals data, uncertain sale-price provenance, stale evidence, unsupported scenarios, or processing problems. Incomplete evidence is never labelled Safe.<\/p><\/dd>\n One canonical cost source is active at a time: WooCommerce native COGS when available, or MarginBeacon Cost. You can also enable an optional global assumed-cost fallback. Missing cost is never treated as zero. Migration to WooCommerce COGS copies only empty WooCommerce cost fields and switches only after a verified catalog pass.<\/p><\/dd>\n It estimates gross product margin risk for supported WooCommerce promotion scenarios. You can preflight a selected native coupon before launch and review risk evidence on supported promotional orders, including preliminary results before payment is confirmed.<\/p><\/dd>\n Yes. MarginBeacon Free includes cost setup and coverage, manual selected-coupon preflight, promotion-related order risk, a bounded Recent Orders Preview, global thresholds, and basic health tools. Pro is an optional companion for deeper automation and analysis.<\/p><\/dd>\n Missing cost is never treated as zero. Depending on the available evidence and configured fallback, the result remains Unknown rather than being labelled Safe.<\/p><\/dd>\n An explicit stored cost of 0 is a real merchant-entered value, for example a free sample. A missing cost means no reliable cost evidence exists. Only the missing case stays Unknown. A proven zero cost can produce a 100% gross product margin when revenue is positive.<\/p><\/dd>\n No. MarginBeacon calculates gross product profit and gross product margin estimates. It is not a net-profit, cash-flow, tax, fulfillment-cost, or accounting system.<\/p><\/dd>\n Free manually evaluates one selected native WooCommerce percentage, fixed-product, or fixed-cart coupon at a time against a bounded set of eligible products at quantity 1. Fixed-cart coverage is single-line, not a representative multi-line basket. There is no standalone sale-price preflight. An active sale price is used only as the current price basis for that selected coupon. Supported order evaluation can use verified native coupon and sale-price evidence. Unsupported or ambiguous promotion mechanisms are not presented as Safe.<\/p><\/dd>\n Yes, supported preflight scenarios evaluate purchasable variations individually. Each relevant variation still needs resolvable cost and price evidence. External or affiliate products, bundles, composites, add-ons, and subscription renewals are not claimed as supported without a specific integration.<\/p><\/dd>\n It is an optional first-look at recent promotional orders so Promo Risk is not empty after install. It evaluates up to 30 days or the latest 100 qualifying promoted orders, whichever limit is reached first. It is not a full historical backfill of every past order.<\/p><\/dd>\n A free-shipping coupon does not reduce merchandise revenue, so product-margin math can look Safe while shipping cost is still unmeasured. MarginBeacon may label that as product margin Safe with shipping cost excluded. That result is not a claim that the whole promotion is safe.<\/p><\/dd>\n Recurring renewals use pricing and eligibility rules outside the current WooCommerce native coupon and sale-price contract. MarginBeacon marks those orders Unsupported instead of guessing a Safe or at-risk result.<\/p><\/dd>\n Free provides manual preflight and core promotion-risk monitoring. Pro adds automated and targeted scans, representative multi-line fixed-cart baskets, category-level controls, advanced evidence and reporting, baseline-order monitoring, advanced recalculation, and Price History.<\/p><\/dd>\n\n<\/dl>\n\n\n\n
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Does MarginBeacon block checkout?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Why do I see Unknown?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
How does Cost \/ COGS work?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
What does MarginBeacon actually do?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Can I use MarginBeacon for free?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
What happens when product cost data is missing?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Why is a stored cost of 0 different from a missing cost?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Can it calculate net profit?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Which discount scenarios are supported?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Does it work with variable products?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
What does Recent Orders Preview cover?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Why is a free-shipping coupon not simply Safe?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Why is a subscription renewal Unsupported?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
What is the difference between Free and Pro?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
1.0.0<\/h4>\n\n
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