03 — Products, Packaging, Ports & Cost Heads

Every costing you build later is assembled from a handful of building blocks: the products you ship, how they are bagged and stuffed into containers, the ports they move between, the cost heads that make up your landed price, the exchange rates that convert between currencies, and the vendors and buyers on each side of the deal. Set these up once, and every new costing starts from a full toolbox.

Before you start

• Finish Set Up Your Export Profile first — your export profile provides the currency pegs and letterhead details the rest of the system leans on.
• If you have not seen the workspace tour yet, start with Before You Start.

Here is how these building blocks feed a costing:

flowchart LR
    subgraph blocks["Building blocks (this section)"]
        item["Product (Item)"]
        pack["Item Packaging"]
        port["Port"]
        head["Cost Head"]
        fx["Currency Exchange rates"]
        supplier["Suppliers"]
        customer["Buyer (Customer)"]
    end
    item --> pack
    pack --> costing["Export Costing"]
    port --> template["Costing Template"]
    head --> template
    template --> costing
    fx --> costing
    supplier -->|"quote rates"| costing
    costing -->|"quoted to"| customer

Steps

1. Add your products

The system calls a product an Item — rice, cashew, even the bags you pack them in are all Items.

1. Type "Item" in the search bar at the top of the screen and open Item List.
2. Click Add Item.
3. Enter the product name as the Item Code (for example "IR64 PB Rice 10%"), pick an Item Group, and set the Default Unit of Measure to the unit you trade in (for example Kg).
4. Click Save.

How you know it worked: the product appears in the Item list, and you can pick it later when you add packaging or a costing line.

Add one Item per product you export. If you also buy packing material (bags) as a separate purchase, add that as an Item too — a cost head can point at it later.

2. Describe the packaging — Item Packaging

Item Packaging tells the system how a product is bagged and how many bags fit in a container. The tonnage, bag counts, and per-bag prices on every costing are calculated from this one record.

1. In the Export Management workspace sidebar, under Masters, click Item Packaging.
2. Click Add Item Packaging.
3. Fill in the fields:
   • Item — the product this packaging belongs to.
   • Container Type — 20' FCL, 40' FCL, or 40' HC.
   • Is Default — tick it if this is the packaging you normally use for this product.
   • Unit Weight (Kg) — the filled bag weight; this drives gross tonnage (for example 50).
   • Empty Bag Weight (Kg) — deducted from gross to get the net commodity weight (for example 0.13).
   • Bags per Container — how many bags you stuff into one container (for example 540).
4. Click Save.

How you know it worked: the record saves with a name like "IR64 PB Rice 10%-50kg", and when you add this product to a costing later, the Packaging box offers it and the bag and tonnage columns fill themselves in.

Create one Item Packaging record per bag size you actually ship. If you sell the same rice in 25 kg and 50 kg bags, that is two records.

3. Add your ports

Ports appear on costings, costing templates, RFQs sent to vendors, and every printed shipping document. Add every loading port you ship from and every discharge port you ship to.

1. In the workspace sidebar, under Masters, click Port.
2. Click Add Port.
3. Enter the Port Name (for example "Cotonou"), the Port Code (the international code, for example "BJCOO"), and the Country.
4. Click Save.

How you know it worked: the port shows in the Port list and can be picked as Port of Loading or Port of Discharge everywhere ports are asked for.

4. Build your cost head tree

A Cost Head is one line of your landed cost — ocean freight, terminal handling, the surveyor's fee, the rice itself. Cost heads live in a tree: group folders on top (Shipping, Custom Clearance, Procurement, Surveyor…) and the actual chargeable heads underneath. RFQs go out per group, so vendors only ever see the heads in their own category.

1. Type "Cost Head" in the search bar at the top and open Cost Head Tree.
2. You will see the tree. Click a group name (for example Shipping) to expand it and see the heads inside.

3. To add a new head, click the group it belongs to, then click Add Child. To create a whole new group first, click New at the top right, give the group a Cost Head Name, set Parent Cost Head to "Cost Head", and tick Is Group.
4. Give the head a Cost Head Name and set its defaults — these pre-fill every costing template and costing line that uses the head, so you type them once:
   • Default Stage — where in the journey this cost lands: Ex-Works, FOR, FOB, CFR, CIF or Destination. Ocean freight, for instance, is a CFR-stage cost.
   • Default Qty Basis — what the rate is multiplied by: Per Net MT, Per Gross MT, Per Kg, Per Bag, Per Container, Per 5 Containers, Per BL, Lumpsum, Percent of Subtotal, or Manual.
   • Default Currency — the currency vendors usually quote this head in.

5. Two checkboxes matter for procurement-type heads; leave both off for ordinary service costs like freight or handling:
   • Is Item Scoped — tick for heads that repeat once per product line on a costing (for example Procurement Cost, Bags). The quantity then comes from that product's own line, not the shipment total.
   • Is Goods — tick when the vendor is quoting the real product itself (the rice, the bags), so the RFQ asks for the actual product instead of a service.
6. Below the checkboxes:
   • Goods Item — for procurement heads, the actual product Item whose cost is being built. Leave blank for pure cost heads like THC or Seal.
   • Service Item — filled in automatically; this is the behind-the-scenes item vendors quote against. You do not need to touch it.
   • Account Head — optional; the ledger account to use if these charges are posted to accounts later.
7. Click Save.

How you know it worked: the new head appears under its group in the tree, and when you add it to a costing template or costing line, the stage, quantity basis and currency arrive pre-filled.

5. Enter exchange rates

Costings are built in rupees but quoted in dollars or CFA francs, so the system needs current exchange rates. Three currency pairs are needed for the full flow: USD → INR, USD → XOF, and XOF → INR.

1. Type "Currency Exchange" in the search bar at the top and open Currency Exchange List.
2. Click Add Currency Exchange.
3. Set the Date (today), the From Currency, the To Currency, and the Exchange Rate. Leave For Buying and For Selling both ticked.
4. Click Save, and repeat for the other two pairs.

How you know it worked: all three pairs show in the list, and the Exchange Rates section of a costing picks them up when it converts vendor quotes and computes your USD/EUR selling prices.

Update these when the market moves — a costing is only as accurate as the rates behind it. (The CFA-franc pegs you entered in Set Up Your Export Profile cover the duty math; these rows cover everything else.)

6. Add your suppliers — with an email address

Every vendor you want rates from — rice mills, shipping lines, CHA/clearing agents, bag makers, surveyors — needs a supplier record with a contact email. When you send RFQs later, the personal quote link goes to that email address.

1. Type "Supplier" in the search bar at the top and open Supplier List.
2. Click Add Supplier, enter the supplier's name, and save.
3. Open the saved supplier, go to the Address & Contact tab, and click New Contact.
4. Enter the contact person's name and their email address, then save the contact.

How you know it worked: back on the supplier's Address & Contact tab, the contact card shows the email marked as Primary Email. When you add this supplier to an RFQ later, the Email ID column fills in by itself.

A supplier without a contact email can still be added to an RFQ, but no quote request can be emailed to them.

7. Add your buyer — with a billing address

Your buyer is recorded as a Customer. The billing address matters more than it looks: the country on it tells the system where your goods are sold, which feeds the export-benefit calculations later in the flow.

1. Type "Customer" in the search bar at the top and open Customer List.
2. Click Add Customer, enter the buyer's name, and save.
3. Open the saved customer, go to the Address & Contact tab, and click New Address.
4. Enter the buyer's address. Keep the Address Type as "Billing", change the Country to the buyer's country (it starts out as India), tick Preferred Billing Address, and save.

How you know it worked: the address card on the customer's Address & Contact tab shows "Billing · Primary Address" with the buyer's country on the last line.

One-time technical setup — ask your administrator: leave the customer's GST Category field alone for now. It should stay unset until the India-compliance app is installed; your administrator will handle it if and when GST-linked refunds are configured.

What you now have

A costing can now reference every master it needs: products with packaging math, ports with codes, a cost head tree with sensible defaults, live exchange rates, vendors it can ask for rates, and a buyer to quote. Next, wire them together so new costings start pre-filled: Costing Templates.