Recording shipment costs
Add freight, port fees, insurance, and more at the shipment level, and understand how costs split across the vehicles on a shipment.
Shipment costs are the expenses that apply to a voyage as a whole: freight, port fees, loading, insurance, and anything else that doesn't belong to a single vehicle. Record them once, here, and ImportOps divides them across every vehicle on the shipment.
Before you start
- You need Shipments edit permission.
- You're on a shipment's detail page.
Adding a cost
- Click Add cost on the shipment detail page.
- Pick a category (see the table below).
- Enter the amount and currency.
- Optionally enter a conversion rate to your organisation's accounting currency.
- Add a description so your team knows what the line item is.
- Save.
The cost appears in its category group, the category subtotal updates, and the running total at the top of the Costs panel updates with it.
The five categories
| Category | What goes here |
|---|---|
| Container shipping | The freight cost for the container or RoRo booking itself. |
| Port fees | Charges raised by the port of loading or destination. |
| Loading fees | Costs for loading or unloading the vehicles at either end. |
| Maritime insurance | Insurance cover for the voyage. |
| Misc | Anything else that applies to the voyage but doesn't fit a named category. |
How costs split across vehicles
Shipment costs are split evenly across every vehicle on the shipment. If a shipment has 4 vehicles and a total shipment cost of 2,000, each vehicle carries an allocated share of 500. If you then add a fifth vehicle, every vehicle's share drops to 400.
This split is what each vehicle shows as Allocated shipment cost on its Financial summary card and Costs tab.
What happens when the vehicle list changes
- Add a vehicle to the shipment: every existing vehicle's allocated share drops, because the total is now divided by more vehicles.
- Remove a vehicle from the shipment: every remaining vehicle's allocated share rises, because the total is now divided by fewer vehicles.
- Add or edit a cost: the allocated share on every vehicle updates straight away.
You don't have to do anything to keep allocations in sync. They recalculate every time you view them.
Editing or deleting a cost
Each row has a pencil icon to edit and a trash icon to delete. Edits update both the shipment total and every vehicle's allocated share.
Currencies and totals
- Individual cost rows keep the currency you entered them in.
- The shipment total at the top of the Costs panel is shown in your organisation's accounting currency, converted using either the conversion rate you entered on the cost or the default rate.
- On each vehicle, Allocated shipment cost is shown in the organisation's accounting currency as well.
A practical tip
Always add shipment-wide costs here rather than copying them onto each vehicle. If a vehicle joins or leaves the shipment later, the allocation stays correct automatically.