1. Getting started
Install
Install DutyLookout from the Shopify App Store, or from a direct install link if you were given one. The install screen asks for two permissions:
- View and edit store data — Products. DutyLookout reads your product titles, descriptions, types, vendors and tags to classify them, and writes an approved HS code back to the product.
- View staff and contributor data — Store owner. Used only to know where to send alert emails.
DutyLookout never asks for customer, order or payment data, and does not store any. If you are asked for more than the above, you are not looking at DutyLookout.
Choose a plan
After installing you land on Shopify's plan page. There is one plan, Pay as you go, and it costs $0 per month. You approve it once; nothing is charged until you actually classify something, and DutyLookout never sees your card.
Billing is per product classified, on graduated rates — each band's price applies only to the classifications inside it, like tax brackets:
| Classifications per month | Price each |
|---|---|
| First 25 | Free |
| 26–100 | $0.09 |
| 101–1,000 | $0.055 |
| 1,001–5,000 | $0.035 |
| 5,001+ | $0.032 |
What this costs in practice
Classifying a catalogue is mostly a one-time job. After the first pass you are only billed for products you add or materially change — re-syncing, re-opening the app, browsing, and approving codes are all free.
| Your catalogue | First month | Ongoing (adding ~2% a month) |
|---|---|---|
| 100 products | $6.75 | $0.00 — 2 a month is inside the free 25 |
| 1,000 products | $56.25 | $0.00 — 20 a month is inside the free 25 |
| 5,000 products | $196.25 | $6.75 |
| 25,000 products | $836.25 | $28.75 |
The ongoing column is deliberately not "first-month cost × 2%". The free 25 resets every month and applies to ongoing months too, so a catalogue that grows slowly costs nothing at all to keep classified — the graduated bands only start biting once you add more than 25 products in a single month.
What counts as a classification
One product receiving an HS code from the AI. Specifically:
- A product with several size or colour variants counts once — classification happens at the product level and the approved code applies to all variants.
- Products where you already supplied a valid HS code are not billed.
- A product whose exact text has been classified before is served from cache and is not billed again.
- Editing a title, description or material can change the correct code, so a materially changed product is reclassified and billed again.
There is no catalogue size limit. The per-classification rate falls as volume rises, and nothing is held back behind a plan tier.
Keeping an eye on it
Settings → Plan and usage shows how many classifications you have run this month and roughly what they cost. Your Shopify invoice is the authoritative amount — DutyLookout's figure is an estimate from its own records.
On a development store? The app is free to test on development stores, and the approval screen says so explicitly. Regular rates apply only when the store goes live.
First sync
The moment your subscription is active, DutyLookout imports your catalogue. You do not need to press anything.
The dashboard shows two cards:
Catalog — how many products are synced and when the catalogue was last updated.
Classification funnel — where your products are:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Queued, not yet classified |
| Auto-classified | High confidence (0.90+) |
| Suggested | Good confidence (0.70–0.89), worth a glance |
| Needs review | Low confidence or genuinely ambiguous |
| Approved | You accepted the code |
| Overridden | You replaced the code with your own |
| Merchant code | You already had a code; DutyLookout kept it |
How long the first run takes
Classification is deliberately batched to keep AI costs at pennies per store. A batch is sent when either 25 products are queued or 15 minutes have passed, whichever comes first.
So on a small catalogue expect to wait up to 15 minutes for the first results. On a large one the batches start flowing almost immediately. The Pending column counts down as they land; nothing is lost if you close the tab.
Keeping it up to date
You do not need to re-sync manually. DutyLookout listens for product changes in Shopify and re-classifies anything whose title, description, type, vendor, tags or materials changed. Products you have not touched are left alone, so editing one product does not re-bill you for the whole catalogue.
Use Sync catalog on the dashboard only if you want to force a full re-import — for example after a bulk edit through a CSV or another app.