Landed cost

Landed cost is what a product actually costs you by the time it is on your shelf, including the purchase price plus freight, duty, clearance, insurance and handling.

Also searched as: true cost of goods, total landed cost

Updated July 2026

Businesses that price off the invoice price alone systematically overestimate their margin. For imported goods the gap between invoice price and landed cost is frequently double digits as a percentage, which is enough to turn a product you think is profitable into one that is not.

The difficulty is allocation. One shipment contains twenty products and one freight bill. Splitting that cost across the items by value, weight or volume is arithmetic nobody wants to do by hand, so it either gets estimated or ignored.

When the system allocates it at the point of receipt, every downstream number inherits the correct cost: stock valuation, cost of goods sold, and the margin figure a salesperson sees when they are deciding how much discount to give.

Where the margin went

An item invoiced at $8.40 with freight, duty and clearing allocated might land at $9.80. Sell it at $11 and you are making 11%, not the 24% the invoice price suggested.