04 — Costing Templates

A costing template is the memory of one shipping lane. "Maersk to Lome", "MSC to Cotonou" — each lane has the same recurring charges every time you ship it: BL fee, terminal handling, ocean freight, CHA, quality inspection. Instead of typing those charges into every new costing, you record them once in a template. When you later create a costing and pick the template, the discharge port, the destination currency, the whole charge list and the import-duty parameters land on it in one click.

Before you start

• Finish Products, Packaging, Ports & Cost Heads first — a template is built from cost heads and points at a port, so both must already exist.
• Your export profile should be done too: its Rate Staleness Threshold (Days) decides when a template's old rates get flagged as stale.

Here is what a template carries into every costing that uses it:

flowchart LR
    subgraph template["Costing Template (one per lane)"]
        lane["Port of Discharge + Destination Currency"]
        charges["Charges list (cost head, stage, rate)"]
        duty["Import Duty / POD Clearing parameters"]
    end
    template -->|"picked on a new costing"| costing["Export Costing"]
    costing -->|"rates older than the staleness threshold"| stale["flagged stale — re-quote before trusting"]

Steps

1. Open the Costing Template list

1. In the Export Management workspace sidebar, under Masters, click Costing Template.

How you know it worked: the list opens — it will be empty the first time, with a message that you haven't created a Costing Template yet and a button to create your first one. The screenshot above shows what the list will look like once your lanes are in: one row per template, with its Port of Discharge alongside. Plan one template per lane you actually ship — a lane is a shipping line plus a discharge port, so "Maersk – Lome" and "MSC – Lome" are two different templates even though the port is the same.

2. Create the template and name the lane

1. Click Add Costing Template.
2. Enter the Template Name — name the lane so you recognise it at a glance, for example "Maersk – Lome".
3. Set the Port of Discharge — the destination port this lane delivers to. It must already exist as a Port.
4. Set the Destination Currency — the currency of destination-stage charges and the per-bag margin block, as the on-screen hint says (for example XOF for Cotonou or Lome, XAF for Cameroon). It starts out as INR, so change it.

How you know it worked: the form header still says "New Costing Template — Not Saved"; that is fine, you will save after adding the charges. Notice the Import Duty / POD Clearing numbers arrive pre-filled with sensible defaults — you will review them in step 4.

3. List the lane's recurring charges

Every charge you add here becomes a ready-made line on each costing that uses this template.

1. In the Charges grid, click Add row.
2. Pick the Cost Head. Its Stage, Qty Basis and Currency fill in from the defaults you set on the cost head in the masters section — adjust them only if this lane is different.
3. Enter the Rate — the latest rate you know for this lane, in the row's currency.
4. Set Rate Updated On to the date that rate was last confirmed. This date matters: when the template is applied to a costing, any row whose date is older than your Rate Staleness Threshold (Days) gets flagged stale, so you know which rates to re-quote before trusting the numbers.
5. Repeat for every recurring charge on the lane, then move on — ocean freight and other vendor-quoted heads belong here too, with your last known rate; the RFQ round later replaces them with fresh vendor quotes.

How you know it worked: each row shows its number, cost head, stage, qty basis, rate and currency, with the date in the last column (shown abbreviated as "Rate U…"). Click the pencil icon on a row to open it full-size if the grid feels cramped.

4. Review the Import Duty / POD Clearing block

Below the charges sits the lane's destination-clearing math — what it costs to get the cargo through customs at the port of discharge (POD). The fields come pre-filled with standard defaults; change them only if this lane clears differently.

• BFU % — the bond, entered as a fraction of the customs-rate CFA duty value. Type 0.20 for 20%, not 20.
• Tax % — also a fraction, applied on top of the convertible CFA duty, BFU and transitor together (the grey hint under each field spells this out).
• Transitor per Container — the clearing agent's fee at destination, per container, in the destination currency.
• Commission per Bag — the per-bag selling commission at destination, in the destination currency.

How you know it worked: the four fields hold your lane's numbers. These get copied onto each costing once, at the moment the template is applied — changing the template later does not rewrite costings you already built, so old deals keep the numbers they were priced with.

5. Save

1. Click Save (top right).

How you know it worked: the "Not Saved" badge disappears and the template name moves into the breadcrumb at the top (the Template Name box itself no longer shows on a saved template — the name in the header is it). The template also appears in the Costing Template list with its Port of Discharge.

Repeat steps 2–5 for every lane you quote regularly.

What you now have

One template per lane, each holding the recurring charges, the destination-clearing parameters and the lane's port and currency. When you create a costing in Create an Export Costing and pick a template, all of it populates in one click — and if the costing already has charge rows, the system asks before replacing them, so you cannot wipe work by accident. Next, wire up the accounts side: Exim Accounts & Masters.