Your true landed cost is everything it takes to get an international order to your customer: the product, shipping, duties, import taxes, customs fees, carrier surcharges, currency and payment costs, and the cost of returns. To audit it, take a sample of recent orders for each market, list every cost line you actually paid, and compare the total with what you collected at checkout. Any gap is margin you are losing or a surprise your customer is paying at the door.
Cost | Where to find it | Common mistake |
Shipping | Carrier invoice | Using the quoted rate instead of the billed rate |
Duties | Customs entry or carrier duty lines | Wrong HS code or country of origin |
Import taxes (VAT, GST) | Carrier invoice or tax filing | Forgetting that many markets tax shipping as well as goods |
Customs and brokerage fees | Carrier invoice | Leaving them out because they are small per order |
Carrier surcharges | Carrier invoice (fuel, remote area, peak, corrections) | Ignoring peak and fuel changes during the year |
Currency and payment costs | Payment processor reports | Pricing in USD and converting at checkout without a buffer |
Returns | Return labels and refunds | Assuming duties and taxes come back automatically |
Pull 20 to 50 recent orders for each of your top markets, with a mix of order values and product types. Use exports from the FlavorCloud Admin to get order level data.
Duties depend on the HS code, the country of origin and the declared value. Confirm each is correct before you look at the money, because a wrong code changes every number after it.
Use billed amounts, not quotes. Add each line from the table above to the order.
For each order, compare what the shopper paid for shipping, duties and taxes at checkout with what you paid. For DDU orders, also note what the shopper was asked to pay on delivery and whether the parcel was refused.
Low value exemptions and tax registration thresholds differ by market and change often. Several markets have reduced or removed them, so orders that used to arrive duty free may not anymore. See Managing tax thresholds.
Add currency conversion and payment fees, then the cost of returns for that market: return shipping, refunds and any duties and taxes you cannot recover. Some can be. See Understanding duty avoidance and duty recovery.
With the true number in hand, choose for each market whether to show duties and taxes as separate lines, build them into an all in price, or absorb part of them to hit a price point.
At least once a quarter, and whenever a market changes its duty or tax rules, a carrier changes surcharges, or you add new products.
Shipping cost is what the carrier charges to move the parcel. Landed cost adds duties, import taxes, customs fees and every other cost of getting the order delivered.
The most common causes are a wrong HS code, a wrong country of origin, a declared value that differs from the price charged, or an estimate that did not include customs fees. Fix the product data first, then switch to a guaranteed landed cost at checkout.
Want help auditing a market? Contact your FlavorCloud account manager.