About SK Landed Cost Manager

SK Landed Cost Manager helps organizations prepare, allocate, invoice, post, and track the additional costs associated with containers, trucks, and other inbound shipments.

By creating and managing import shipments and other logistics units, the solution provides a central control point for inbound shipment tracking, purchase flows, landed cost management, and cost allocation. From shipment planning through goods receipt and financial posting, it ensures complete visibility and traceability, while leveraging the standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Item Charge and posting processes.

Key Features

• Create and manage import shipments and container references.
• Attach complete or partial purchase order lines to one or more shipments.
• Record freight, transport, handling, insurance, customs, and other landed costs.
• Manage costs in local or foreign currencies, with dedicated exchange rates.
• Allocate costs by purchase amount, quantity, gross weight, net weight, volume, or manual selection.
• Restrict a given cost to selected shipment lines or quantities.
• Generate purchase invoices automatically by vendor, shipment, currency, and exchange rate.
• Use the standard Business Central item charge assignment and posting processes.
• Track allocated costs, landed cost percentages, margins, invoice history, cancellations, and posted value entries.

Business Benefits

• Centralize shipment tracking, purchasing activities, landed costs, and cost allocation in a single control point.
• Improve the accuracy and visibility of imported inventory costs.
• Reduce manual calculations and spreadsheet-based tracking.
• Maintain complete traceability, from inbound shipment creation through to posted cost entries.
• Preserve the standard Business Central accounting and inventory valuation processes.

SK Landed Cost Manager is designed for importers, distributors, wholesalers, manufacturers, and other organizations that need to include logistics and import-related expenses in the actual cost of purchased goods.

Requirements

• A valid Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials or Premium license is required.
• Implementation, consulting, and configuration services are not included, unless separately agreed with SKOR CONSEIL.
• Detailed setup, configuration, and user documentation is available online for customers and authorized users of the solution.

Chapter 1 — Initial Setup Options

Before creating the first import shipment in SK Landed Cost Manager — commonly known as a Container — the Landed Cost Setup page must be configured. This page centralizes the add-on’s general rules: each option on it determines whether a given action — receiving, invoicing, reopening, allocating a cost — can be performed directly from the shipment card.

This configuration is normally done once, during the initial deployment of the add-on, by an administrator or a user with setup permissions.

Terminology: Import Shipment = Container

The entity that represents an inbound shipment (a container, a truck…) is named Import Shipment throughout Business Central. This is what is commonly called a Container in everyday business language — a term that doesn’t appear anywhere in the interface itself, but is still used informally as a synonym. Both terms refer to the same thing:

• List page: Import Shipments → the list of shipments (Containers).
• Card: Import Shipment (e.g. no. A00630) → a single shipment record, with its attached purchase order lines and landed costs.

Accessing the Setup Page

From any Business Central page, click the Tell Me search icon at the top of the screen, then type “Landed Cost Setup”. Select the result listed under Go to Pages and Tasks.

Page Overview

The page is made up of four areas: Cost Allocation, Posting from Shipment, Numbering, and Locations.

Cost Allocation

Field	Purpose
Allow Partial Line Allocation	Enables or blocks, when allocating a landed cost from the shipment card, the ability to manually pick which lines or quantities the cost applies to. If this option is turned off — or no manual selection is made — the cost is always allocated automatically across all eligible lines of the shipment.

Tip: turn this on if some costs (e.g. an insurance that only covers part of the shipment) need to be charged to a specific selection of lines rather than to the whole shipment.

Posting from Shipment

This section indicates, for each type of operation, whether it can be done directly from the shipment card, without going back to the purchase order itself.

Field	Corresponding action on the shipment	Purpose
Allow Receipt Posting	Post Purchase Order Receipts button	If turned off, this button is unavailable: receipts must be posted from the purchase order itself. This option only covers one of the two receiving modes (see below).
Allow Invoice Posting	Post Purchase Invoices action	If turned off, invoicing from the shipment is unavailable; it must be done from the purchase order.
Auto Fill Vendor Invoice No.	Applies to the invoice created by Post Purchase Invoices	When on, the draft purchase invoice automatically reuses its own document number as the vendor invoice number. When off, that number must be entered manually.
Allow Shipment Reopening	Reopen Shipment action	If turned off, a closed shipment can no longer be reopened manually.

Important — two receiving modes, only one is covered by this setting. The add-on actually supports two ways of receiving the goods for a purchase order line attached to a shipment, and the choice between the two does not depend on any SK Landed Cost Manager setting, but on the standard Business Central location configuration (the customer’s own warehouse rules):

1. Direct receiving of the purchase order from the shipment (Post Purchase Order Receipts button) — the only mode covered by the Allow Receipt Posting option.
2. Receiving through a standard Business Central Warehouse Receipt, when the line’s location requires it — the shipment then shows the Create Warehouse Receipt and Warehouse Receipt Lines actions instead, and receiving follows the standard warehouse process end to end.

The Allow Receipt Posting option therefore has no effect on the warehouse-receipt mode, which always remains available whenever the location configuration requires it. Both modes are covered in full in Chapter 4.

Numbering

Field	Purpose
Import Shipment Nos.	The standard number series used to automatically assign a number to every new shipment that is created.

Locations

Field	Purpose
Purchase Order Location Policy	Specifies whether every purchase order line attached to the shipment must match the shipment’s destination location, or whether lines for other locations may also be added.

Two values are available:

• Require Destination Match — the strict option: only purchase order lines whose location matches the shipment’s destination can be attached to it.
• Allow Different Locations — the flexible option: purchase order lines going to different locations can also be attached to the same shipment.

Tip: keep Require Destination Match for a strict match (the most common case); choose Allow Different Locations if a single shipment can deliver several locations.

Chapter Key Points

• Setup is done on a single page, Landed Cost Setup, reached through the Tell Me search.
• The shipment card (Import Shipment) is the actual record all these options act on.
• Four areas to review before first use: cost allocation, posting from shipment, numbering, and location policy.
• Receiving can be done in one of two ways — direct receiving or receiving through a warehouse receipt (always available when the location requires it, independently of this setting).
• This setup normally only needs to be adjusted once, unless the organization’s business rules change.

Chapter 2 — The Import Shipments List

The Import Shipments page — commonly called Containers — is the entry point for viewing every shipment created in SK Landed Cost Manager, regardless of its status. Each line summarizes, for a given shipment, the progress of receiving, invoicing, and landed cost allocation.

Accessing the List

Click the Tell Me search icon, type “import shipments”, then select Import Shipments under Go to Pages and Tasks. The Open Import Shipments shortcut is also available directly from the global overview shown on the home page (Chapter 2 bis).

List Overview

Each column provides a specific indicator:

Column	Purpose
No.	The shipment’s number, assigned from the series defined in Landed Cost Setup.
Description	Free-text label for the shipment.
Status	Overall status of the shipment.
Progress	Detailed current step.
Outstanding Quantity	Quantity still to be received.
Qty. Rcd. Not Invoiced	Quantity received but not yet invoiced; a negative value signals over-invoicing.
Purchase Amount (LCY)	Total purchase amount of the lines assigned to the shipment.
Landed Cost Amount (LCY)	Total landed costs allocated.
Total Cost (LCY)	Goods value + landed costs.
Landed Cost %	Landed costs allocated as a percentage of the total purchase amount.
Profit %	Estimated margin indicator for the shipment (see the actual calculation below).
Remaining Amount to Allocate (LCY)	Item charge amount still to be allocated.
Remaining Amount to Post (LCY)	Landed cost amount still to be posted.
Destination Location Code	Destination location, set from the first purchase order line attached.

How Profit % is actually calculated. Profit % compares the shipment’s Total Cost (purchase amount + allocated landed costs) to the sales value of the lines, calculated from the Unit Price field on the item card — not from an actual invoiced sales price. It is never an average of line percentages: the total is recalculated from cumulative amounts, weighted by each line’s sales value. A missing or zero unit price on the item card will directly distort the indicator.

Key takeaway: a shipment with a non-zero remaining amount to allocate or to post is not yet fully processed — this is the first indicator to watch on this list.

Shipment Statuses

• Open — shipment created, no receipt posted yet.
• In Transit — shipment in transit (manual transition).
• Partially Received — some of the lines have been received.
• Received — all assigned lines have been received.
• Landed Costs Partially Posted — some of the landed costs have been allocated to the lines.
• Landed Costs Posted — all eligible landed costs have been allocated.
• Closed — shipment closed manually.
• Cancelled — shipment cancelled.

These statuses progress automatically as receiving and invoicing occur; some transitions remain manual (moving to In Transit, closing, cancelling).

Actions Available from the List

• Landed Cost Analysis — opens the detailed line-by-line analysis (Chapter 6).
• Print Landed Cost Analysis — generates the printable/exportable landed cost detail by item, for the selected shipment(s) (Chapter 6).

Chapter Key Points

• This list is the overview table for every shipment: status, progress, amounts, and profitability indicators are all visible at a glance.
• The Remaining Amount to Allocate and Remaining Amount to Post columns flag shipments that still need attention.
• Profit % compares the actual total cost to the item card’s Unit Price, not to an actual sales price.
• From this list, you open the detailed shipment card, which is covered in Chapters 3 to 6.

Chapter 2 bis — The Global Overview

In addition to the Import Shipments list (Chapter 2), a summary overview is available directly on the Business Central home page: it shows at a glance the number of active shipments, their status, the quantities still to be received or invoiced, as well as the total cost and estimated margin across all shipments in progress.

Chapter 3 — Import Shipment Card: Creation and Transport Details

The Import Shipment card — commonly called a Container — is the operational core of SK Landed Cost Manager. This chapter covers its creation and header (identity, dates, transport).

Creating an Import Shipment

From the Import Shipments list (Chapter 2), click New. Fill in at least:

• No. — assigned automatically from the configured series.
• Description — free-text label.
• Shipment Reference — external reference (e.g. forwarder’s reference).
• Expected Receipt Date.
• Order/Receipt Posting Date — the date that will be applied to receipts, purchase invoices, and landed cost invoices posted from the shipment.
• Port of Loading / Port of Discharge — selected from the reusable Import Ports list.
• Transport Mode — e.g. SEA, AIR, ROAD.

Header: General and Shipment

Field	Group	Purpose
No.	General	The shipment’s identifier.
Description	General	Free-text label.
Status	General	Current status of the lifecycle.
Shipment Reference	General	External reference.
Departure Date	Shipment	Actual or expected departure date.
Expected Receipt Date	Shipment	Expected arrival date.
Order/Receipt Posting Date	Shipment	Date applied to receipts and invoices.
Port of Loading / Port of Discharge	Shipment	Loading and discharge ports.
Transport Mode	Shipment	SEA, AIR, ROAD…
Container Type	Shipment	Type of container or equipment used.
Destination Location Code	Shipment	Destination location; set automatically from the first purchase order line attached.

Header Actions Related to the Lifecycle

Action	Purpose
Set to In Transit	Moves the shipment to “In Transit” status once the goods have left but no receipt has been posted yet.
Close Shipment	Closes the shipment once no further landed costs need to be allocated. A closed shipment can no longer be modified.
Reopen Shipment	Reopens a closed shipment. Only available if the corresponding option is enabled (Chapter 1).

Chapter Key Points

• The import shipment (Container) is created from the Import Shipments list, with a number assigned automatically.
• The header groups the shipment’s identity and transport details.
• The destination location is set automatically from the first purchase order line attached.
• The Set to In Transit, Close Shipment, and Reopen Shipment actions move the overall status forward.

Chapter 4 — Import Shipment Card: Goods Flow

This chapter covers the Shipment Lines FastTab of the Import Shipment card: attaching purchase orders and receiving the goods. Landed costs and their invoicing are covered in Chapter 5.

Attaching Purchase Orders

The Shipment Lines FastTab lists the purchase order lines attached to the shipment. There are two ways to create this attachment.

From the shipment: the Add Purchase Order action lets you attach an additional purchase order.

From the purchase order itself: the Attach to Import Shipment action is available in two places:

Location	Effect
Actions menu on the purchase order header	Attaches all remaining item quantities of the purchase order to an import shipment.
Selected lines in the purchase order’s lines table	Attaches only the quantities of the selected lines.

In both cases, the action opens the shipment list in selection mode: you can pick an existing shipment, or click New to create one on the fly, which immediately becomes the target of the attachment. This is the fastest way to start a shipment directly from a purchase order.

Conditions: the purchase order must not be fully received yet; only item lines with a positive remaining quantity are offered; the attachment respects the shipment’s destination location (Chapter 1).

The quantity assigned can never exceed the quantity still available on the original purchase line (Qty. to Assign column).

Each line shows: Purchase Order No. / Purchase Order Line No., Vendor No., item, description, Quantity Ordered, Quantity (already assigned), Quantity Received, Quantity Invoiced, Qty. to Receive, plus the logistics bases Gross Weight, Net Weight, and Volume, usable to allocate landed costs in Chapter 5.

The line’s Location Code field shows the location the goods on that line are expected to be received into — the same location that determines the receiving mode below.

Receiving the Goods — Two Receiving Modes

This is an essential point in how the add-on works, often misunderstood because it does not depend on any SK Landed Cost Manager setting itself. Depending on the standard Business Central configuration of the location associated with each purchase order line, the shipment automatically offers one of the following two receiving modes, line by line.

Direct Receiving of the Purchase Order

This is the default mode, used when the line’s location does not require any special warehouse handling.

• Fill Quantity to Receive — pre-fills the quantities to receive for all displayed lines.
• Post Purchase Order Receipts — posts the receipts directly from the shipment. Only available if Allow Receipt Posting is enabled (Chapter 1).

Receiving Through a Warehouse Receipt

When the line’s location requires a warehouse receipt (a standard Business Central rule), the shipment replaces the direct-receiving actions with:

• Create Warehouse Receipt — creates a standard Business Central warehouse receipt for the purchase order in question.
• Warehouse Receipt Lines — opens the standard Business Central warehouse receiving page, filtered to the shipment’s purchase order(s).

Receiving itself is then entirely driven by the standard Business Central warehouse process. The add-on simply provides a shortcut to create and open that receipt, and automatically synchronizes the shipment as soon as the warehouse receipt is posted.

These two sets of actions are mutually exclusive: for a given purchase order, only the actions matching its receiving mode are shown. It is normal for a single shipment to combine lines using direct receiving and lines using warehouse receiving.

Forcing Direct Receiving Despite a Warehouse Requirement

The attempt is blocked with this message: “Purchase order line [no.] on purchase order [no.] uses location [code], which requires a warehouse receipt. Direct receiving from the import shipment is not allowed. Create and post the standard Business Central warehouse receipt.”

Common to Both Modes

Regardless of the receiving mode used, landed costs can only be allocated to lines that have already been received (see Chapter 5).

Preparing and Posting the Purchase Order Invoicing

Once the goods have been received, two actions let you prepare and trigger the invoicing of the purchase order itself (not to be confused with landed cost invoicing, covered in Chapter 5):

• Fill Quantity to Invoice — pre-fills the quantities to invoice with the received-not-invoiced quantity.
• Post Purchase Invoices — posts the purchase invoices for the entered quantities. Only available if Allow Invoice Posting is enabled (Chapter 1).

The Qty. Rcd. Not Invoiced column flags, line by line, what is still to be invoiced.

Chapter Key Points

• Purchase orders are attached to the shipment, in full or in part, either from the shipment itself or from the purchase order via Attach to Import Shipment (with the option to create a new shipment on the fly).
• Receiving the goods follows one of two modes, determined automatically by the standard Business Central configuration of each line’s location: direct receiving or receiving through a warehouse receipt.
• Attempting direct receiving on a line that requires a warehouse receipt is blocked with an explicit message.
• Landed costs can only be allocated to lines that have already been received, regardless of the mode used.

Chapter 5 — Import Shipment Card: Landed Cost Flow

This chapter covers the entire flow for logistics-related landed costs (freight, transport, handling, insurance, customs…) on an import shipment: their initial setup, entry, allocation, invoicing, posting, and correction in case of error via a credit memo. The relevant FastTab on the card is Landed Costs, with its own Landed Cost Allocation sub-table.

Reminder: a landed cost can only be allocated to lines that have already been received (Chapter 4).

Setting Up an Item Charge (Prerequisite)

Before a cost can be used on a shipment, it must exist as an Item Charge, a standard Business Central page, with its add-on-specific fields:

• Charge Nature — the default nature of the cost: Shared Charge for freight, transport, handling, insurance, or forwarding; Line Tax for a tax or a cost to be posted directly to a G/L account.
• Allocation Method — the default method: Amount, Quantity, Gross Weight, Net Weight, Volume, or Manual.
• Allocation Scope — the default scope: most commonly All Shipment Lines, but it can be restricted to a single line, item, item category, tariff number, or VAT product posting group.

Entering a Cost on the Shipment

On the shipment card, the Landed Costs section lists the logistics costs entered. Its action bar offers: Manage, Landed Cost Allocation, creating item charge invoices, posting item charge invoices, and Traceability.

Field	Purpose
Type	“Charge (Item)” for a standard item charge, or “G/L Account” for a cost posted directly to a general ledger account.
No.	Standard Business Central lookup for the item charge or G/L account.
Vendor No.	The vendor for this cost — mandatory before creating the purchase invoice.
Currency Code	Currency of the cost; blank = local currency.
Amount	Amount of the cost, in its own currency.
Amount (LCY)	Automatic conversion to local currency.
Allocated Amount (LCY)	Amount already allocated across shipment lines.
Allocation Method	The line’s actual allocation method.
Purchase Invoice No.	The active purchase invoice linked to this cost.
Vendor Invoice No.	Vendor’s invoice number. Can be entered directly on the landed cost line, without opening the underlying draft purchase invoice.

Any change to the vendor, currency, amount, or method immediately refreshes the allocation.

Important — Vendor Invoice No. is mandatory to post in Business Central. The Vendor Invoice No. is not just a convenience field: it is a standard Business Central rule — no purchase invoice can be posted without a vendor invoice number entered. There are two ways to fill it in: entering it directly on the cost line, or having it filled in automatically if the corresponding option is enabled (Chapter 1).

Restricting a Cost to Specific Lines or Quantities

By default, each cost is allocated automatically across all eligible lines. For a partial allocation, the Landed Cost Allocation action group offers:

• Select Shipment Lines — displays all shipment lines and lets you add or remove lines from this allocation via a Selected checkbox.
• Edit Allocation Quantities — checks the lines already selected and lets you adjust their partial quantities.
• Use All Eligible Lines — clears the manual selection and reverts to automatic allocation.

Reviewing the Allocation

The Landed Cost Allocation sub-table updates automatically and shows, for each cost and each affected purchase line: the cost, the allocation method, the purchase order and item, the total quantity, the quantity included in the cost, the allocated amount, and the amount already posted.

Invoicing Landed Costs

From Landed Costs, the item-charge-invoice creation action group offers:

• Create Item Charge Invoices (Selected) — invoices only the selected cost lines.
• Create Item Charge Invoices (All) — invoices all eligible costs on the shipment.

Requirements: a vendor must be entered on the cost line; the amount and the allocated amount must be non-zero and balanced; for a Charge (Item) type cost, the related goods lines must be received.

The process creates or updates one draft purchase invoice per vendor, shipment, currency, and exchange rate.

Posting in Business Central

From Landed Costs, the item-charge-invoice posting action group lets you post the selected invoices or all of them. The actual posting remains entirely standard Business Central: SK Landed Cost Manager never directly modifies item ledger entries, value entries, an item’s unit or average cost, or inventory entries already posted.

Correcting an Already-Posted Landed Cost Invoice (Corrective Credit Memo)

The add-on provides a full correction mechanism for an error on a landed cost invoice that has already been posted, through a corrective credit memo — a standard Business Central purchase credit memo that reverses the posted invoice.

On the relevant cost line: the Invoice History indicator shows a discreet warning as soon as a posted invoice has been cancelled by a credit memo; the action of the same name opens the line’s full history (each posted invoice and its corrective credit memo, if any); after cancellation, the purchase invoice and vendor invoice numbers are cleared on the line, to allow for clean re-invoicing.

On the shipment lines, the Cancelled Invoices column shows the number of posted purchase invoices that were later cancelled; the Posted Invoices column shows the number of active invoices still in effect.

Chapter Key Points

• A logistics cost is first set up as an item charge, then entered on the shipment.
• Without intervention, allocation is automatic across all eligible, already-received lines.
• The Vendor Invoice No. can be entered directly on the landed cost line.
• Costs are invoiced by vendor/shipment/currency/exchange rate, then posted — posting remains 100% standard Business Central.
• If an error is found on a landed cost invoice already posted, the add-on handles the full correction through a credit memo.

Chapter 6 — Import Shipment Card: Monitoring and Reporting

This chapter brings together everything used to track, control, and audit an import shipment once the goods have been attached and the landed costs entered: the shipment’s numerical summary, the detailed line-by-line analysis and its printable report, the full invoice and credit memo history, value entries, and general traceability.

Tracking Overview

This section of the card summarizes, for the whole shipment, the same indicators as the Import Shipments list (Chapter 2), but calculated only for this shipment: quantities (quantity, received, remaining, invoiced, received-not-invoiced) and local-currency amounts (purchase amount, landed cost amount, allocated amount, total cost, remaining amount to allocate, remaining amount to post).

Detailed Analysis: Landed Cost Analysis

Accessible from the Landed Cost Analysis action, this page details, shipment line by shipment line, how cost and margin are built up: unit purchase cost, purchase amount, unit and allocated landed costs, total unit cost, unit price, landed cost %, and profit %, with an “Estimated” or “Posted” status depending on actual progress.

The Printable Report

Worth noting: this analysis is also available as a printable/exportable report, via the Print Landed Cost Analysis action. This is not a simple screen-print shortcut: it is a standard Business Central report that reproduces, item by item, every column of the analysis, with a print-ready layout and export options (PDF, Excel…).

This action is available at three levels: from a shipment card, from the Import Shipments list, or from the global overview. This is the reference report to hand over to accounting, an auditor, or customs, to justify — item by item — how the logistics cost was included in the cost of the imported goods.

Invoice History and Corrective Credit Memos

As covered in Chapter 5, each landed cost can be corrected through a credit memo. The dedicated Landed Cost Invoice History page gives the full detail: posted invoice number, status (Active or Cancelled), corrective credit memo number, posting date, vendor invoice number, and the originating shipment and cost line.

Value Entries and Traceability

• Value Entries — opens every Business Central value entry created or reversed by this shipment’s landed costs, for direct accounting control.
• Traceability — groups the cross-cutting control actions (invoice history, value entries) into a single entry point.
• Refresh Posting Status — reconciles the shipment with the receipts, invoices, and cancellations actually posted.

The Audit section of the card shows who created the shipment and when, and the date of the last status change.

Checking for Issues Before Invoicing

The header action Check Landed Cost Issues displays landed cost lines that still need information (e.g. a missing vendor) or a balanced allocation before they can be invoiced. This is the check to run before launching Create Item Charge Invoices (All).

Chapter Key Points

• Tracking Overview gives the shipment’s numerical summary; the remaining-amount-to-allocate/to-post columns flag what still needs attention.
• Landed Cost Analysis details how cost and margin are built up, line by line.
• Print Landed Cost Analysis is a genuine printable/exportable report, giving the item-by-item detail of allocated landed costs.
• The invoice and credit memo history lets you trace and control every credit-memo correction made on a landed cost already posted.
• Check Landed Cost Issues is the control point to use before any batch invoicing of costs.