Shipping and additional costs on a purchase order

Shipping, freight, customs duty, insurance and handling can add to a unit's purchase price. StockBold spreads these costs across the purchase order lines and stores the result as a landed cost per unit.

Your stock is valued at the purchase price, converted into your organisation's currency, plus the landed cost per unit.

Record or change shipping

Shipping Cost is in the totals panel alongside the net and tax amounts, in the order's own currency.

1. Open Purchase Orders.
2. Open the order.
3. While the order is still a draft or pending approval, enter the carrier's charge in Shipping Cost as part of editing the order. Once the order has left those states, use the small pencil button in the Shipping Cost row to change shipping without reopening the whole order.
4. Save.

The pencil button appears only if your role has the Manage PO Financials permission. It is hidden when the order's fiscal year is locked, the supplier has been deleted, or the whole order is already open for editing.

Add additional costs

The Additional Costs (Landed Costs) section is further down the order page and appears only when the order's status is Approved.

1. Open the approved purchase order.
2. Go to Additional Costs (Landed Costs).
3. Select Add Cost.
4. Choose a Cost Type: Customs Duty, Freight, Insurance, Handling or Other. It starts on Other.
5. Enter a Description if it will help you recognise the charge later. This is optional.
6. Enter the Amount. The label shows the expected currency: your organisation's currency, not the supplier's. The amount must be greater than zero.
7. Select Add Cost again to save.

Add Cost appears only if your role has the Manage PO Financials permission. It is hidden when the fiscal year is locked or the supplier has been deleted. The same conditions apply to the button for deleting a recorded cost. Without the permission, you can still see the section and recorded costs, but you cannot add or remove them.

Additional costs do not change the purchase order total because they are not money owed to that supplier on that order. They do raise the value of the stock. Once the order has at least one additional cost, an Additional Costs card appears in the sidebar, showing Total, Extras and Grand Total so you can see both figures side by side.

How costs are allocated

Allocation is proportional to value. Each line receives a share of the total extras equal to its own net value divided by the net value of every line on the order. That share is divided by the line's ordered quantity to give the landed cost per unit. Expensive lines absorb more of the freight bill than cheap ones; on a line of ten units, each unit carries a tenth of the line's share.

Only the shipping cost itself is allocated. Shipping tax is not included in the landed cost calculation.

Shipping is allocated only when Include PO Shipping in Inventory Valuation is switched on. Find it in Settings, on the Organization page, in the Inventory Valuation section. Only an owner can change it.

Additional costs are always allocated, including costs recorded as Freight, regardless of that setting. If the setting is off, shipping entered on the order is recorded for the supplier's paperwork but never reaches your stock value.

When landed costs are recalculated

The per-unit figure is recalculated when shipping or the conversion rate changes, or when an additional cost is added or deleted. It is not recalculated when you edit line quantities or prices.

If you enter shipping first and then change the lines, the per-unit figure remains based on the old lines. Saving the same shipping figure again will not fix it because nothing changed. Save a different shipping amount, or add or delete an additional cost, to force the split to be worked out again.

Check the landed cost breakdown

When an order has additional costs, the sidebar card offers View landed cost breakdown. It opens Landed Cost Breakdown, a per-item table showing each line's Net Value, Landed/Unit and Total Landed, so you can check the split before relying on the valuation.

The breakdown lists the order's shipping under Costs to Allocate even when Include PO Shipping in Inventory Valuation is off. The Additional Costs list also shows it as a separate Shipping row marked From PO. The per-item Landed/Unit column does respect the setting. When the setting is off, Total to Allocate is therefore higher than the per-item figures add up to; the per-item figures are the ones your stock is valued on.

The Shipments page shows its own landed value per line, based on the quantity actually delivered so far rather than the quantity ordered. It always counts the order's shipping, regardless of the inventory valuation setting. On a part-delivered order, the two figures will not match, and that is expected.

Why a landed cost may be zero

The order may have no shipping cost and no additional costs recorded. It may also have shipping recorded but no additional costs, with the inventory valuation setting off.

If every line has a net value of zero, there is nothing to allocate against and the whole order is set to zero. A free supplier replacement can also show zero: it inherits the full cost of the units it replaces, with the landed portion already folded into that figure.

Locked fiscal years

When the order's fiscal year is locked, you cannot edit shipping or add or delete an additional cost. Unlock the year first if you genuinely need to restate a past period.