Cost of goods, quietly worked out
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About COG

Built out of a candle studio's spreadsheets.

COG began as an internal margin tool inside a small home fragrance business in the Inner West of Sydney. We noticed we were spending more time re-costing than making — and the wider small-business world seemed to have the same problem.

Open handwritten ledger with neat number columns and a hand-drawn pie chart on kraft paper.
Our story

A small tool for a small kind of work.

The first version of COG was a Google Sheet with too many tabs, shared between a maker, her partner (a bookkeeper), and a cafe owner across the road who wanted the same trick. It answered a plain question — when the milk goes up, what does that do to my margin? — and it answered it honestly.

We rebuilt it as software in 2025, kept the plain-English feel, and stayed narrow. COG is deliberately not an inventory system, or a POS, or a whole ERP. It's the layer that sits underneath those and tells you what things cost, cleanly, in Australian dollars, with the GST split correctly.

The team

A small group in Sydney & Newcastle.

A
Amelia Hollis
Founder · Product

Ceramicist by training. Ran a small home-fragrance business for five years before spending too many nights in spreadsheets.

R
Ravi Menon
Bookkeeping · Compliance

Registered BAS agent. Keeps us honest about GST, PAYG, and the parts of small business that lawyers and the ATO care about.

J
Jules Whittaker
Engineering

Ex-Xero, ex-Envato. Builds the sync layer between COG and the accounting systems most of our customers already use.

Frequently asked

Small questions, honest answers.

Is COG only for Australian businesses?
Right now, yes. Our GST handling, BAS reporting hints and integrations are Australia-first. We may add New Zealand's 15% GST support in 2027 — it's on the shortlist because a lot of our customers ship trans-Tasman.
Do I need to be registered for GST to use it?
No. If you're under the $75,000 threshold you can toggle GST off entirely — COG will keep your figures GST-exclusive and stop applying the 10% split.
Does COG replace Xero or MYOB?
No. COG sits alongside them. We sync sale prices, purchase invoices, and payments in from Xero or MYOB, and push margin and re-cost events back. Your BAS is still done in the accounting system, where your bookkeeper wants it.
How is COG different from a POS margin report?
POS margin reports use the cost you keyed in — often once, months ago. COG re-costs when a supplier price moves and tells you which SKUs are now underwater. It also handles the labour-per-unit that a POS system doesn't know about.
What data do you store, and where?
Cost inputs, SKU records and margin history — nothing more. Data is stored in AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2). We don't sell it, share it, or train models on it. Full details in our privacy policy.
Can I export everything if I leave?
Yes, at any time, as CSV or JSON. Your SKU library, cost history, and margin log are yours. We think that's the baseline for any tool that touches your operating numbers.

Small tool. Small commitment. Big clarity.

Open the calculator and drop in a real SKU. If it earns its rent, come back for the rest.

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