Freight, duty and insurance are real costs of getting stock into your warehouse. Adding them to the purchase order spreads them across the items, so your item cost reflects what the stock actually cost you — not just what was on the vendor's invoice.
Before you start
The cost type must already exist in Settings — for example Freight, Duty or Insurance. If it does not, someone with admin access needs to add it first.
Add a cost
Open the purchase order and click Edit.
Find the extra costs section beneath the line items.
Choose the cost type.
Enter the amount — the total for the whole order, not per unit.
Choose how it should be split:
By quantity — every unit takes the same share
By cost — expensive items take a bigger share
Click Save.
Which split to choose
By quantity suits things that cost the same to move regardless of value — a pallet of tubes costs the same to ship as a pallet of saddles.
By cost suits things charged on value — import duty is usually a percentage of what the goods are worth.
Example
$150 freight on an order of 100 tubes and 50 saddles.
By quantity: $150 ÷ 150 units = $1.00 on every unit
By cost: the saddles are worth more, so they take more of the $150
Add it before you receive
This changes your item cost, permanently. Once you receive the order, the freight is baked into what those units cost you. That is the point — but it means the figure you enter should be the real one.
Add it before you receive. Extra costs added after the stock has been received are not applied backwards to the receipt that already happened.
How to know it worked
The extra cost appears in the totals at the bottom of the order. After receiving, the item's average cost is slightly higher than the unit price on the order — that difference is the freight.