Managing tariffs as part of landed costs involves setting up and allocating costs associated with importing goods, including tariffs, shipping, insurance, and other import-related charges.
By integrating these costs into the landed cost calculation, businesses can ensure accurate inventory valuation, improve pricing strategies, and maintain precise financial records. Inbound Shipping records can also be used to track and apply landed costs, such as brokerage fees and customs duties. Protelo has helped our clients configure NetSuite’s native Inbound Shipping, and we offer a robust shipment management application for Inbound Shipping.
Importing goods can be a complex and costly process, especially when tariffs, shipping fees, and other charges pile up—impacting your landed costs, pricing accuracy, and profit margins.
Protelo’s Inbound Shipping solution simplifies this by integrating all import-related expenses into your cost calculations, providing real-time, detailed visibility at the item level. With advanced features like vendor shipment tracking, tariff management, and automated compliance filings, our solution helps you control costs, maintain precise financial records, and make smarter pricing and inventory decisions—so your business stays competitive and profitable.
The Challenge:
Companies often import goods from or work with third-party manufacturers in foreign countries, which may carry tariffs and other variable landed costs that make up the overall cost of the product being purchased or made. NetSuite can handle inbound shipments to manage item receipts and landed costs of shipments.
All other standard requirements to maintain a bird’s eye view of estimated landed costs by item when imported are managed as historical data points, which may not provide an accurate starting point for pricing the imported goods for sale.
The Solution:
Protelo has designed a vendor shipment management application that functions as an overlay to the native inbound shipment process. Vendor shipment management incorporates several data points at the item level to maintain expected landed costs per unit based on a variety of factors. Finished goods are generally ordered in bulk and shipped in containers that carry fairly static costs for periods of time.
The item record not only maintains the common container used for shipments for the item, but case quantities, case measurements, and the number of cases/items that can fit in a single container. Most items have HTS codes that will dictate the duty and tariff percentages due upon acceptance of the container. All of these static data points, along with several other options, can be assigned to the item record to calculate a per-unit total cost estimate that can be used for pricing and margins by the sales staff for advanced orders, and by marketing and operations for budgeting. As container costs and tariffs are updated, estimated landed costs are also updated for each item to maintain real-time data points.
Importer Security Filings are required at the port of arrival no later than 24 hours to shipment arrival. Vendor shipment managements has introduced container objects which are filled in a similar way to inbound shipment records. Each shipment can contain as many containers as necessary, and each container can correspond to a native inbound shipment records that is created directly from the application. Importer Security Filing documents can be generated from the vendor shipment management record, reducing the costly overhead and tedium of creating the documents manually.
As an added measure, vendor shipment management also includes item inspection reports that can be completed at the departure port, the arrival port, or after the shipments have been accepted. This feature is beneficial for companies using third party manufacturers to reconcile vendor billing and account for acceptable loss.
Partnering with Protelo for NetSuite Success
Looking to gain tighter control over importing costs, tariffs, and landed cost calculations in NetSuite? Protelo’s team of NetSuite experts has helped hundreds of companies like yours tailor their ERP systems for real-world importing and supply chain challenges. From customizing NetSuite’s native inbound shipping tools to deploying our powerful Vendor Shipment Management solution, we bring hands-on expertise that drives results. Partner with us to improve pricing accuracy, automate compliance, and streamline landed cost tracking—so your business can grow with confidence.
