06 — Create an Export Costing

The Export Costing is where a deal starts. On one page you list the products going into the containers, lay out every cost between the mill and the discharge port, and read your landed cost per MT and per bag — in rupees, dollars and euros at once. Everything later — vendor RFQs, the customer quotation, the sales order, the shipment — hangs off this one document.

Before you start

• Finish Costing Templates first — a template pre-fills the charges for a shipping lane so you never build a costing from a blank page.
• Templates in turn need the building blocks from Products, Packaging, Ports & Cost Heads, including current exchange rates.

Steps

1. Open a new costing

1. In the Export Management workspace sidebar, under Shipments, click Export Costing.
2. Click Add Export Costing at the top right.

A fresh costing form opens with sensible defaults already in place:

How you know it worked: the Costing Date shows today, the Status shows Draft, and Container Type and No. of BL are pre-set to 20' FCL and 1.

2. Fill in the deal basics

1. Check the Costing Date — it defaults to today.
2. Pick the Container Type you plan to ship in: 20' FCL, 40' FCL or 40' HC.
3. Set No. of BL if the deal will run on more than one bill of lading — per-BL charges multiply by this number.
4. Set the Destination Country to the buyer's country and, if you know them, the Expected Shipment Date and Crop Year.
5. Pick the Customer if you already know who you are costing this for — you can also add them later, before you quote.
6. Leave Port of Loading empty. Vendors will quote you rates per loading port, and the port gets locked when you pick the cheapest vendor mix later — see Pull Rates & Pick the Cheapest Mix.

3. Pick the Costing Template — the charges fill themselves

1. In Costing Template, pick the template for this shipping lane (for example "MSC – Visakhapatnam").

The moment you pick it, the Charges table fills with the template's cost lines — each row carries its Cost Head, Stage, Qty Basis, Rate and Currency. The template also copies over its destination details: the destination currency, the Port of Discharge if the template carries one, and the import-duty numbers (BFU %, Transitor per Container, Tax %, Commission per Bag) into the Import Duty / POD Clearing section.

How you know it worked: the Charges table shows the lane's cost lines with rates and currencies filled in. The Qty and Amount (INR) columns still read 0 — they compute from the products you add next.

Two things worth knowing:

• If you pick a different template on a costing that already has charges, the system asks "Replace the existing charge rows with this template's?" before it overwrites anything.
• Template rates older than your staleness threshold (set in Export Settings) arrive flagged as stale — a reminder to ask vendors for fresh numbers rather than trust old ones.

4. Add your product lines

1. Scroll to the Items table and click Add row.
2. Pick the Item (the product).
3. Pick the Packaging — the list offers only that product's packagings; choose the bag size this deal ships in.
4. Enter Containers — how many containers of this product.

The remaining columns compute themselves from the packaging record: Units / FCL (bags per container), Unit Weight (Kg), Total Bags, Gross MT and Net MT.

How you know it worked: once the Item, Packaging and Containers are all in, the bag and tonnage columns fill in — 10 containers × 540 bags × 50 kg gives 5,400 bags and 270 gross MT, with net MT slightly lower because the empty-bag weight is deducted.

Add one line per product if the shipment mixes products (for example rice in two grades).

5. Save

1. Click Save (or press Ctrl+S / Cmd+S).

How you know it worked: three things happen at once —

• The costing gets its number (JMC-PI-26-…) and stays at Status Draft.
• The Quantities section totals up all product lines: Total Containers, Total Bags, Total Gross MT, Total Net MT.

• The Charges table gains two extra rows per product — one for the commodity itself (Procurement Cost, priced Per Net MT) and one for its packing bags (priced Per Bag). These rows show the product in the Qty Source Item column: their quantity comes from that product line, not from the shipment total. Every row's Qty and Amount (INR) now compute — Per Container rows multiply by 10, Per Net MT rows by 269.30, and so on.

Rates you already know (the template's fixed costs, your mill price) you can type straight into the Rate column and save again. Rates you want vendors to compete on, leave alone — the RFQ round fills them in the next section.

6. Read the cost build-up

Every charge row belongs to a Stage, and the stages stack up to your landed cost:

flowchart LR
    exw["Ex-Works\ngoods + bags at the mill"] -->|"+ mill-to-port costs"| for["FOR\non the truck/rail"]
    for -->|"+ port & clearing charges"| fob["FOB\nloaded on the vessel"]
    fob -->|"+ ocean freight"| cfr["CFR\nat the discharge port"]
    cfr -->|"+ insurance"| cif["CIF\nyour landed cost"]

Scroll to Cost Build-up (INR) (click the heading if it is folded shut). The left column shows the running totals in rupees — Ex-Works Total, FOR Total, FOB Total, CFR Total, CIF Total and Total Expense (INR). The other columns translate the same build-up into per-tonne prices your buyer talks in: FOB / CFR / CIF per MT (USD) and (EUR), converted at the costing's exchange rates, plus any Finance Cost % and Profit % you set in Pricing (both 0 to start).

How you know it worked: each total is at least as big as the one above it (each stage adds costs), all six per-MT figures — FOB, CFR and CIF in both USD and EUR — show non-zero values (they compute as soon as your Exchange Rates section carries a USD and a EUR rate), and CIF per MT in USD is roughly your rupee CIF total divided by the net tonnage at the going dollar rate.

Three neighbouring sections support this math — you rarely need to touch them now:

• Exchange Rates — one row per foreign currency on the costing, picked up automatically from your Currency Exchange records, with the FX buffer from Export Settings applied as a safety margin.
• Destination (per Bag) — the landed cost and margin per bag at the discharge port, in EUR and USD against the CFA pegs. It comes alive once vendor rates and a selling price are in.
• Import Duty / POD Clearing — the duty math for the discharge port, using the BFU %, Transitor, Tax % and Commission numbers the template copied in.
• Raw Vendor Rates — empty for now; it snapshots vendor quotes when you pull rates in Pull Rates & Pick the Cheapest Mix.

7. A first look at Pricing

The Pricing section already suggests a Quoted Price per MT — your cost per MT rounded to the nearest whole unit in the quote currency — and shows the resulting Quoted Value (INR). Overwrite it freely; pricing properly, with live margin against the selected vendor mix, is covered in Price It, Quote It, Win It.

While you are here you can also record the commercial wording for the proforma later: Shipment Terms, Transhipment, PI Validity Date and Payment Terms (for example "100% Payment at Sight" or "50% Advance, 50% against BL Copy").

Where the costing goes from here

The Status field tracks the deal through its life — you move some steps yourself, others move automatically:

flowchart LR
    draft["Draft\n(you are here)"] --> rates["Rates Received\nvendors have quoted"]
    rates --> selected["Costing Selected\ncheapest mix picked"]
    selected --> quoted["Quoted\nsent to the buyer"]
    quoted --> won["Won\nsales order confirmed"]
    quoted --> lost["Lost"]

Your costing is saved, computing totals, and sitting at Draft. Next, put the vendor-sourced rates out to tender: Ask Vendors for Rates (RFQs).