Shipping Costs

Updated at February 5th, 2025

Table of Contents

Module Description Setup Setup Origins Insertion of shipping price lists Header Lines Charges Calculating transport costs Passive Invoice Reconciliation

Module Description

The transport costs module allows you to manage the calculation of transport costs incurred by the company for shipments at its own expense.

All calculations made on transport documents (both purchase and sale) can then be reconciled with the passive invoice received from the supplier.

Setup

Setup Origins

In the Origins setup the following fields must be filled in:

Enable shipping cost calculation: activate to enable the calculation of shipping costs on documents
Shipment Line Type – Sales: Indicate whether the shipping cost on sales shipments should be accounted for as an Item, G/L Account, Debit or Resource
shipping line – Sales: the item/Account/etc. for accounting purposes for sales must be indicated
Shipment Line Type: Indicate whether the shipping cost on purchased shipments should be accounted for as an Item, G/L Account, Debit or Resource
Shipping line no. – Purchases: the item/account/etc. for accounting purposes for purchases must be indicated
Shipping cost – Assign by: indicate the logic for allocating the cost on the document lines
- Equally
- By Amount
- By Weight
- By Value

Insertion of shipping price lists

To create a new price list specific to each forwarder, from the “Shipping Price List” page select the “New” action.

Header

When opening the price list, the first piece of information to be entered is the forwarder to which it refers in the “Freight forwarder code” field.

The “Status” field has the function of activating or suspending the price list. Specifically:

New: initial state of the price list that allows you to modify the rows, but which does not make the inserted parameters usable
Released: to be set when you want to activate the price list. In this state it is not possible to modify the data
In development: Set to make changes to the price list after release. Temporarily disables the price list
Closed: status to set when you want to permanently deactivate the price list

Lines

In the price list lines, instead, the rates and their criteria are defined for each route defined by a departure and arrival point.

Specifically, the compilation logic is as follows:

Departure type: Based on the value chosen, the departure field will open the indicated table.
- Supplier : if the place of departure coincides with the supplier address or one of its order addresses
- Customer : if it coincides with the customer address or one of their shipping addresses
- Location: if the goods depart from a location
- Area : allows you to select an area as your starting point.

Zones are defined on the “Zone List” page. Each line refers to a forwarder area, which can refer to:

Countries: you can indicate one or more countries that fall within the area
City: you can indicate one or more cities that fall within the area
ZIP: you can indicate one or more ZIP codes that fall within the area
Region: you can indicate one or more regions that fall within the area

Only one of the above fields can be filled in for each zone.

The priority is used to indicate which price list line should be applied to the document in the event that there are two or more conflicting lines with different Zones.

Shipping Service Code: Fill in only if the shipping agent offers different shipping services (e.g. 'Standard', 'Express', etc.) with different rates.

The forwarding services are defined on the “Forwarding Services” page, which can be reached with the appropriate action on the “Forwarding Agents” page.

Departure: Based on the value entered in the “Departure Type”, the field will have table relations on customers, suppliers, locations or zones. The actual departure location must be entered.
Departure address: if the Departure coincides with a customer or supplier, in this field it is possible to indicate a specific alternative address.
Arrival type: same logic as the “Departure type” field, but aimed at the destination location.
Arrival: same logic as the “Departure” field, but aimed at the destination.
Arrival address: same logic as the “Departure address” field, but facing the destination location
Minimum quantity: to be filled in if different price bands based on gross/net weight, pallet or volume are foreseen for a route.
The minimum weight represents the minimum value that the parameter (weight, volume, etc.) must reach on the document, in order for the price list line to be applied.
Tariff type: indicate which parameter the transport cost calculation should be based on. Specifically, it can assume the following values:
- Gross Weight: Shipping cost will be calculated as Unit Price multiplied by the Gross Weight resulting from the document header (entered manually) or, if empty, calculated on the lines as 'Quantity' x 'Unit Gross Weight'
- Net Weight: Shipping cost will be calculated as Unit Price multiplied by Gross Weight resulting from the document header (entered manually) or, if empty, calculated on the lines as 'Quantity' x 'Unit Net Weight'
- Pallet: the shipping cost will be calculated as Unit price multiplied by the No. of pallets resulting from the document header (entered manually) or, if empty, calculated on the lines as 'Quantity' x 'Unit pallet'
- Travel: the shipping cost will coincide with the Unit Price. It represents a fixed cost for the trip
- Volume: the shipping cost will be calculated as Unit Price multiplied by the Volume resulting from the document header (entered manually) or, if empty, calculated on the lines as 'Quantity' x 'Unit Volume'
Start Date and End Date: indicate the validity period of the price list line
Valid for return: by activating the flag the logic defined on the line will also be applied in the event of a return

Charges

Below the rows there is another page where you can define the transport costs for each row of the price list. These will be applied in addition to the transport costs calculated according to the rows of the price list.

In the lines of the charges the fields must be filled in as follows:

Charge: enter the desired charge code
Amount Type: can assume two values:
- Amount - to define a fixed value that will be added to the transport costs
- % - to define a percentage that will be applied to the transport costs and will be added to the latter
Amount: indicate the amount or percentage of the charge
Link to price list line: field with drill-down on the list of lines of the price list itself where it is possible to select the line to which to assign the charge. If this field is not filled in, the charge will be applied to all lines.

Different shipping charges can be created for each line of the price list.

Calculating transport costs

Shipping costs can be calculated on:

Sales orders
Cumulative shipments
Registered shipments
Purchase orders
Cumulative loads
Recorded purchase receipts
Sales/Purchase Return Orders
Return loads registered
Registered return shipments
Transfer orders

On the pages of the documents indicated above there are two actions:

Calculate shipping cost: to launch the calculation of the shipping cost
Open shipping cost Doc.: to view the calculated shipping cost

In order for the cost calculation to be successful, the following data must be present on the document:

Forwarder: so that the system understands the price list to consider. It is necessary that the price list is in 'Released' status
Shipping service: only if filled in the price list
Route that is present in the price list: the Departure – Arrival combination of the document must be included in the forwarder's price list
Calculation parameter: more precisely, if in the price list line, the “Tariff Type” field has been filled in with:
- Travel : it is sufficient that there is at least one line with the document route
- Gross/net weight, volume or pallet: the unit weight/volume/pallet that represents the parameter of the price list line must be filled in on the master data of the items present in the document line. Alternatively, the corresponding field on the document header must be filled in (Net Weight, Gross Weight, Volume or Pallet)

On the header of the document there are two calculated fields in which the Shipping Amount and the Fixed Charges Amount will be reported if included in the price list.

As an example, we insert a sales order and fill in the main header fields, in particular insert the Forwarder code, and in the rows we insert a certain item, which will have the starting location code 001 Central warehouse:

At this point click on Actions, Functions, Calculate transport costs:

The following page will open where the cost calculated based on what was entered in the shipping price list will be entered in the Expected transport cost field:

In the Manual freight cost field, you can enter the actual freight cost that you agreed upon, for example, with the supplier at a later time or for the specific order. Once you have finished filling it in, close the page.

Then register the shipment:

Passive Invoice Reconciliation

Upon receipt of a passive invoice from the forwarder, who must be indicated as a supplier in the “Forwarders” register:

An invoice must be created in his/her name, and to fill in the lines it will be possible to "take" the transport costs calculated and detected in the various shipments made based on a price list in his/her name (via the "Link to shipping cost" line function).

Then enter a purchase invoice, filling in the essential header fields, such as supplier and shipping code, supplier invoice number and after filling in the lines, the total amount:

In the rows, click on Row, Functions, Link to shipping cost:

The system will automatically propose my shipping cost line entered for sale. Give the ok:

The system will display a charge line with a unit quantity and an amount equal to the amount entered in the Manual Actual Transport Cost field (in the example it will be 70):