Product snapshots

The product snapshot task records each product’s price and stock once per day. Without snapshots, the only data the plugin can show for those columns is the current value applied to historical orders — which makes margin trends and price/stock history invisible.

Snapshots feed three things:

• The Margins report — cost % over time, deteriorating margins, cost pressure
• The Product drill-down — historical price and stock series next to the sales timeline
• The Product snapshots browser — read-only view of the captured rows

How it works

A scheduled task runs once per day (typically off-peak) and inserts one row per product into the p2lab_stats_product_snapshot table. Each row captures:

• Product ID + variant ID
• Captured at (timestamp)
• Selling price (currency configurable)
• Purchase price
• Stock
• Available stock (after open-order reservations)

The task is idempotent per day — running it twice on the same day doesn’t create duplicates.

Configuration

Settings live under Settings → Plugins → P2Lab Stats → Tasks → Snapshots.

Setting	What it controls
Enabled	Toggle the daily task
Retention (days)	How long snapshots are kept before old rows are purged
Export progress retention	How long completed exports stay visible (covered in Export)

Recommended retention: 365 days for stores that want year-over-year margin comparison. If table size becomes a concern, lower to 180 or 90 days.

Browsing snapshots

Open P2Lab Stats → Product snapshots to inspect the captured rows directly. Useful for:

• Verifying that the task is running (most recent capture date)
• Debugging unexpected margin trends (compare two consecutive days)
• Auditing a price change across all variants

The page shows the standard sortable data grid with filters by product, variant and date.

Tips & gotchas

Tip

After enabling the task, wait at least 2 days before relying on the Margins → Deteriorating view — the report needs at least two snapshots per product to compute a delta.

Note

Variant-level pricing is captured per variant — the snapshot row includes both the parent product ID and the variant ID. If you only set purchase price on the parent and not on the variant, the snapshot stores the parent’s value for the variant too.

Caution

Disabling the task stops capturing new rows but doesn’t purge existing ones. Re-enabling it later resumes capturing without backfill — you’ll have a gap in the price/stock history matching the disabled period.

Caution

Long retention with a large catalogue grows the snapshot table quickly. Rough sizing: N products × M days = row count. A 20 000-product catalogue at 365-day retention = 7.3 M rows. Plan disk space accordingly.

Related

• Margins report
• Product drill-down
• Configuration → Snapshots