How do you add additional costs to inventory items, e.g. duty and shipping. We purchase up to 20 or 30 items at a time so have to distribute the cost among each item.

HI Jane, my inclination would be to post these items directly to COGs, using a non inventory part, as this is a lot of extra work, for what purpose? 

Can you give me a really good reason why it's necessary to break these costs down in a FIFO tracking system?

You could at year end, estimate an approximate cost of shipping and duty to be added to inventory for year end purposes and reversed out the next day if someone needed to be that specific about the cost of inventory held vs COGs during the year.

I'm not sure I would have an easier way to handle this. If it was Desktop, there might be a way to automate, but with QBO, I doubt it. Anyone else care to comment?

Hi Jane, I agree with you that we should know the actually cost for each inventory item, so that we can make sure that the price we charge is enough.

My company uses landed cost to input each inventory items, and we also use excel to calculate the landed cost for each item. My question is, if the vendor sends us the invoice of  duty and shipping next month along with next shipment, should I allocate that duty and shipping fee to the next shipment or last shipment? If I apply those to last shipment, then I will get negative duty and shipping fee since the inventory billing date and duty freight date are not in the same month. 

Good day, Eva2019.

When you receive the bill, you should enter all the details from it to QuickBooks Online. If there is a shipping fee added on the next shipment, you should enter it. If there's another shipping fee on the last one, enter it as well. You don't have to add the fee in a lump sum amount. It might be the reason why you get a negative duty.
 

You can always go back to this thread if you have further questions.

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@Kristine Mae wrote:

Good day, Eva2019.

 

When you receive the bill, you should enter all the details from it to QuickBooks Online. If there is a shipping fee added on the next shipment, you should enter it. If there's another shipping fee on the last one, enter it as well. You don't have to add the fee in a lump sum amount. It might be the reason why you get a negative duty.
 

You can always go back to this thread if you have further questions.

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This answer shows the Quickbooks Team member has no idea of the issue here and how inventory works in Quickbooks.  And the ambiguity does not hide that.   It would be better to remain silent. 

Thank you for your kind reply, Kristine.  Our vendor always prepaid the duty and shipping fee for us , then charge them back along with the new shipment. For example, we had A shipment from oversea, they sent us the invoice without duty and shipping charge. They said they will charge us along with next B shipment maybe 1 month later, so what should I input the item's cost when I create the purchase order for A shipment? 

Hi there, @Ivy2019.

I appreciate you coming back to us for additional support. Allow me to join this thread and clear this up for you.

You have two options on how to input the item's cost:

• First, you can add the duty and shipping charge on the purchase order. When the vendor pays the A shipment, you can just enter the partial amount (which is without the charge). Then, this PO will only be tagged as closed once the payment is complete.
• Second, you can just add and record the duty and shipping charge on their upcoming transaction, B shipment. 

Let me know which option you prefer by adding a comment below, Eva2019. I'm still here to help you more if you have additional questions. Have a good one.

Quickbooks does not have a way of dealing with shipping costs added as a per item basis?  Really!!

My 25 year old POS system had a field in the purchase order receive function just for shipping costs.  How is this not included in QBO?  

Hi, the best I can do is to recommend you post this as a suggestion. QBO is a work in progress and suggestions are voted up by those who care about it's continued progress. Have a lovely day.

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@TaxDetective wrote:

Hi, the best I can do is to recommend you post this as a suggestion. QBO is a work in progress and suggestions are voted up by those who care about it's continued progress. Have a lovely day.

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LOL

good sarcasm

Whoa, when I first logged in I didn't get the entire thread. What puzzles me about these answers is that shipping costs aren't always paid to the vendor from whom the goods are purchased.  So the recommendation that you go in and edit the original Bill doesn't make sense on two fronts, one it's not the same vendor and two, if the dates on the bills are different, and in fact there are two different bills even if from the same vendor, why would you edit one to add the second? I'm totally confused.

In QBDT we had a way to add an estimate of the labour or other costs to the COGs in order to record additional costs, but I don't see a way to do that in QBO. Maybe I'm missing something?

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@TaxDetective wrote:

Whoa, when I first logged in I didn't get the entire thread. What puzzles me about these answers is that shipping costs aren't always paid to the vendor from whom the goods are purchased.  So the recommendation that you go in and edit the original Bill doesn't make sense on two fronts, one it's not the same vendor and two, if the dates on the bills are different, and in fact there are two different bills even if from the same vendor, why would you edit one to add the second? I'm totally confused.

In QBDT we had a way to add an estimate of the labour or other costs to the COGs in order to record additional costs, but I don't see a way to do that in QBO. Maybe I'm missing something?

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Different situation from what was originally asked - you are asking about landed costs.

1. receive the items as you usually would

2. as each additional bill comes in (shipping, customs, storage, etc)

2a. pay the bill using a clearing expense account

2b. edit the original bill, in the item part increase the total of each item by a portion of the new bill

2c. then in the account part select the clearing expense account and enter that amount as a negative number

2d. insure the total of the original bill has not changed and save, click through any warnings about payments being applied

items now have an increased cost, the clearing expense account is zero balance, each bill is paid on the date appropriate to the bill

if any items were sold in between bills, QB will make adjustments to the COGS and inventory asset account, those adjustments will show as bill when you drill down on the COGS account

If you edit the original bill from the vendor, the bill total in QB's won't match the vendor's bill.  When the vendor is paid, it will look like they were short paid.

The vendor's bill does add up to the original amount.  The individual items are increased by the amount of the other invoice, e.g. shipping, but then you enter a negative item to zero the clearing account and then that brings the bill back down to what the vendor originally gave you.  That is how you check your work.  If the bill isn't what the vendor sent you, you've entered something wrong!

Hello,

Do we need to add percentage of shipping and custom expenses to every items by percentage? 

This is a lot of work to do.

Farid 

Hi,

Just a hypothetical scenario:

If :

1. Supplier XX supplies me with 100 pcs of bags at $10 each

2. Shipping charges by Maersk Shipping Co. is $200

3. Transport & Clearing charges - $100 by XYZ Ltd

I would have to add all these costs to constitute the cost price of one bag,

how do I go about it in Quickbooks plus?

Thank you

Hi,

In addition to my question below, what if the supplier and the other costs to the product have different currency denominations?

Thank you 

@Rustler Won't this increase the amount due to the vendor on the original bill?

I started adding costs to inventory using this method (clearing account) in 2020.  However, I found that I cannot add costs from 2021 to inventory items that we received into inventory in 2020 because the 2020 books are closed and the bill can no longer be edited. Is there a workaround for this?

Unless you control the closing date you can’t. You would have to enter them on the first day of the new year. 

I have managed to apply a shipping cost to each of my SKUs (I used "other charge" in the assembled item) and have that be added to the COGS like I need.  However, I'd like that amount to reduce my Shipping expense line and it's not showing up as a debit from that account as expected.  How can I set up QB to have a charge that is part of an assembly come out of my shipping expense line?