Configure Fees and Discounts
Bookkeep handles the extra money on a purchase order in two different ways, and picking the right one comes down to a single question: should this cost become part of what your inventory is worth?
Freight and duty usually should, because you can't get the goods on the shelf without paying them. Credit card processing fees and testers usually shouldn't, because they aren't part of the value of what you'll sell. Bookkeep gives you a separate tool for each answer.
| The charge | Use | Effect on item cost |
|---|---|---|
| Freight, duty, tariffs, brokerage | Landed cost fee | Spread across the received items, raises unit cost and WAC |
| Supplier volume discount or credit on the goods | Landed cost discount | Spread across the received items, lowers unit cost and WAC |
| Credit card or payment processing fees | Additional fee | None |
| Testers, samples, display units with no SKU | Additional fee | None |
| An estimated shipping figure to print on the PO you send the supplier | The purchase order's own Shipping field | None |
Everything below happens on the receipt, not on the purchase order. The purchase order's shipping and tax fields are estimates for the printed document, and they never reach your item costs.
Set up your fee types
Landed cost fee types are defined once and reused on every receipt. Go to Purchase Orders → Settings → Landed cost fees, then click Add fee type:
- Name — what you'll pick from the list when receiving, such as Inbound freight or Import duty.
- Description — optional, shown under the name in the settings list.
- Kind — Fee adds to item cost, Discount subtracts from it.
- Allocation method — By value or By quantity. This is the default; you can override it on any individual receipt.
- Active — clear this to retire a fee type without deleting it. Inactive types stay on historical receipts but disappear from the picker.
- Display order — controls where the type sits in the picker.
Set these up when you first configure Bookkeep Inventory, so the right fee is one click away when a shipment lands. If you start receiving before defining any, the Landed cost fees section of the receive screen shows a Set up Fees button that takes you straight to the settings page.
Choose an allocation method
The allocation method decides how one lump sum gets divided across the items on the receipt, and it changes the cost of every item involved.
By value splits the amount in proportion to each line's extended cost. Expensive items absorb more of it.
By quantity splits the amount evenly across units. Each unit absorbs the same amount regardless of price.
The difference is not cosmetic. Take a $100 freight charge on a receipt of 10 units at $5 and 10 units at $95:
| Method | $5 item lands at | $95 item lands at |
|---|---|---|
| By value | $5.50 | $104.50 |
| By quantity | $10.00 | $100.00 |
By quantity doubles the cost of the cheap item. By value barely moves it. Neither is wrong in the abstract, but freight on a mixed shipment of cheap and expensive goods almost always belongs by value, while a per-carton handling charge on uniform goods belongs by quantity. See Landed cost is part of WAC for what allocation does to your running average.
Fees are allocated only across lines with a receive quantity. A line you're not receiving on this receipt, or one you rejected in full, absorbs nothing.
Apply a fee while receiving
On the receive screen, open the Landed cost fees section and click Add fee or discount. Each row takes:
- Fee type — from the types you configured.
- Total amount — the whole charge as it appears on the supplier's invoice. Bookkeep does the dividing.
- Allocation method — leave it on Use fee type default, or override it to By value or By quantity for this receipt only.
Add as many rows as the invoice needs; freight, duty, and a supplier credit can all sit on the same receipt. The Cost summary panel updates as you type, showing subtotal, fees, discounts, and the landed total, and each line item shows its own allocated amount so you can see where the money went before you commit.
Allocate amounts by hand
Sometimes the supplier's invoice already tells you the freight per item, or one item in the shipment carried all the duty. In that case you don't want Bookkeep dividing anything.
Turn on the Manual allocation switch in the Line items header of the receive screen. Every line you're receiving gains an Allocated amount field, and the number you type there is that line's allocation exactly as entered. Nothing is spread, and nothing is inferred from value or quantity.
A few things to know about manual allocation:
- It replaces the automatic fee rows rather than supplementing them. While the switch is on, the Landed cost fees section is unavailable, and it tells you to disable manual allocation to go back to automated fees.
- Amounts can be negative, so you can enter a per-line credit. Bookkeep records the receipt's net as a charge when it's positive and as a credit when it's negative.
- Turning the switch back off clears every amount you've entered. Bookkeep warns you before it does.
- Manually allocated amounts hit weighted average cost exactly like allocated fee amounts do. The only difference is who did the dividing.
Add a fee that stays out of item cost
Some costs on a supplier invoice have no business inflating the value of your inventory. A credit card surcharge for paying the invoice, a box of testers shipped alongside the order, a pallet deposit.
On the receive screen, click Add additional fee below the line items. Each one takes a description, a type of Fee or Discount, and an amount. They appear as their own rows beneath the products, roll into the receipt total, and never touch any item's unit cost or your weighted average cost.
Additional fees are also the one fee you can add after the fact. Open a committed receipt and the same Add additional fee button is there, so an invoice that arrives a week after the goods can still be recorded against the right receipt. You can edit or remove them from the same screen. A voided receipt is locked; its fees can't be changed.
You can put up to 20 additional fees on a single receipt.
What reaches your accounting platform
When you create a bill from a receipt, the two kinds of fee travel differently:
- Landed cost fees and discounts are consolidated into one line per receipt, named after the receipt, mapped to whichever expense account you choose for landed costs. The goods lines carry only the items' own cost, so the allocated amounts are never double-counted.
- Additional fees are separate bill lines, and each one gets its own expense account. A credit card fee can post to merchant fees while a tester line posts to samples expense, independent of the goods.
Limits worth knowing
Fee amounts can't be edited after receiving. This is deliberate: the allocation is already baked into your cost history. If a fee was wrong, void the receipt and receive it again. See Fix a Receipt: Voids and Cost Corrections for what a void does to your costs.
A cost correction keeps the fees. Correcting a line's unit cost preserves the landed cost allocations on that line and recalculates weighted average cost using the corrected landed value.
Testers with a SKU are better as line items. If the tester exists as a product in Shopify, order it as an ordinary purchase order line so it receives into stock at cost, then adjust it out when it's opened for the floor. Use an additional fee only when there's no SKU to receive against.