After you install Setpilot, the app needs to pull your full order and product history from Shopify and set up the four cost categories. This article explains what happens during that process, roughly how long it takes, and what to configure once it is done.
How long does it take?
For a typical store with under 10,000 historical orders, the full import finishes in 10 to 30 minutes. Larger stores (50,000+ orders) can take several hours — the import runs in the background and is resumable, so you do not need to keep the tab open.
If the import ever seems to stall, Setpilot has a recovery mechanism that automatically re-queues stuck imports every 10 minutes, so progress will resume on its own.
What to do while the import runs
While orders are importing, you can already start configuring:
Set your default shipping cost in Settings, used as a fallback when no shipping rate cost matches.
Set your default gross margin in Settings — used as a last-resort fallback when no product cost is defined.
Connect your ad platforms (Facebook/Meta, Google Ads, Axon) so marketing spend is pulled in automatically.
After the import completes
Head to Costs Setup and work through the four cost categories. The most important one is Product Costs — see Setting up product costs (COGS) for a full walkthrough.
Once costs are in place, your P&L dashboard will show a complete contribution margin waterfall.