The supplier invoice is not the final cost of imported stock.
For an importer, that is obvious in principle. Yet it is still common for product pricing, gross-margin reporting and purchase decisions to rely too heavily on the supplier price. Freight, duty, clearing charges and foreign-currency movement arrive later, often across different documents and dates. By the time the full picture is available, the goods may already be receipted, priced, allocated or sold.
That gap creates a commercial risk. A product can look profitable when the purchase order is raised and still lose money once the true cost of getting it into the warehouse is known.
This is not only a finance problem. It affects procurement, inventory, sales and the people responsible for protecting margin. If each team works from a different version of product cost, the business cannot make confident pricing decisions. It is reacting to cost after the commercial decision has already been made.
Braintree Trade Assistant extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with capabilities designed for this reality. Its Landed Cost and Forward Exchange Contract modules help businesses incorporate import tariffs, freight and foreign-currency costs into incoming inventory costing, and link purchase documents to recorded forward exchange contracts.
When the purchase price stops being the full story
Import costs do not arrive in a neat sequence.
A procurement team may place an order in US dollars or Euros. Finance may arrange a forward exchange contract to manage currency exposure. The shipment may take weeks to arrive. Freight, duty, clearing charges and other ancillary costs may only be confirmed after the goods have been received into the warehouse.
Meanwhile, sales teams want to know what price they can quote. Management wants to understand expected margin. Finance needs an accurate inventory value and a defensible explanation of how that value was calculated.
The usual workaround is a spreadsheet. Someone maintains a landed-cost model outside Business Central, estimates certain costs and revises the figure as invoices arrive. It can work for a small number of shipments. It becomes fragile when product volumes, currencies, suppliers or shipment complexity increase.
The issue is not that people do not understand freight, duty or exchange rates. The issue is that the cost information is fragmented. Procurement has part of it. Finance has another part. Warehouse teams have the receipt date. Commercial teams are often left with a product cost that is incomplete or out of date.
Where currency movement changes the picture
Foreign exchange exposure adds another layer of uncertainty.
When a business commits to an overseas supplier, it is exposed to the movement between the purchase currency and the Rand until that currency is bought or settled. A Forward Exchange Contract (FEC) can help the business establish a known exchange rate for a future foreign-currency payment.
However, the value of the FEC is limited if it is managed separately from the purchase and inventory process. Finance may know the contract rate, while procurement and inventory teams continue to work from a spot rate, a spreadsheet assumption or the original purchase order value.
Trade Assistant’s Forward Exchange Contracts module enables businesses to record the purchase of forward exchange contracts, link purchase documents to a contract and apply the contract exchange rate to inventory receipts. This brings the financial decision about currency exposure closer to the inventory record and its eventual cost of sale.
That matters because an exchange rate is not a technical finance detail when you import for resale. It is part of the commercial cost of every item received.
A business does not need to eliminate every currency risk to improve control. It needs a clear, governed method for showing which exchange rate informed the inventory cost, which purchase documents are linked to an FEC, and where assumptions still need to be reviewed.
Bringing freight and duty into Business Central
The Landed Cost module within Trade Assistant is designed for businesses importing inventory that need to apply supplementary costs to incoming shipments. These can include import tariffs, freight costs and foreign-currency costs.
The objective is straightforward: ensure the cost reflected against inventory represents more than the supplier’s invoice amount.
For example, a shipment may contain multiple products with different weights, values or quantities. Freight and duty cannot always be treated as one generic cost that finance journals at month-end. They need to be allocated in a way that gives the business a useful view of the cost of each item.
Better visibility still needs better process
No extension makes imported inventory costing perfect on its own.
The business still needs reliable source documents, clear rules for allocating costs, disciplined FEC management and defined ownership across finance, procurement, inventory and commercial teams. If freight invoices arrive late or purchasing information is incomplete, the system cannot invent certainty.
What the right process and technology can do is make uncertainty visible. It can show which costs have been included, which are still estimated, and where the commercial impact needs attention.
That is a more useful position than discovering a margin problem after stock has been sold.
How Braintree helps
Braintree works with finance, procurement and operations leaders to review how imported stock is costed today. We start with the practical workflow: where the purchase order begins, when stock is received, how freight and duty are allocated, how FECs are recorded and when the commercial team treats a product cost as final.
We then map where the process depends on spreadsheets, manual journals or knowledge held by one person. From there, we show how Trade Assistant’s Forward Exchange Contracts and Landed Cost modules can be configured within Dynamics 365 Business Central to improve costing visibility and bring the relevant teams onto the same process.
The outcome is not a lengthy report nobody uses. It is a practical roadmap: where your import-cost exposure sits, which controls should be addressed first, and how to build a more reliable basis for inventory valuation and product pricing.
Talk to Braintree
Book an Imported Inventory Costing Review with Braintree. We will help you map your current freight, duty and foreign-currency process, identify where margin visibility is breaking down, and show how Trade Assistant can bring landed cost and FEC management into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
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