What is landed cost?
Landed cost is the total cost of getting a product from the factory to a customer’s door. For importers, it covers the supplier invoice price plus international freight, customs duty and tariffs, brokerage, insurance and port handling. In practice, these added costs can account for up to 40 percent of unit cost, so a product priced off the invoice figure alone is priced off an incomplete number.
What is MarginChief?
MarginChief is a landed cost calculator for ecommerce importers. It automatically extracts line items from purchase orders, commercial invoices and freight and duty bills, then allocates those costs across the SKUs in each shipment to produce an audit-ready unit cost. Last reviewed September 2026.
Who is MarginChief for, and who is it not for?
MarginChief is built for ecommerce brands importing physical goods, and for the bookkeepers, accountants and fractional CFOs who have to make those numbers hold up at month-end. It fits teams currently rebuilding freight and duty allocations in spreadsheets, typically spending eight or more hours a month doing it. It is not a fit for businesses that need full ERP functions such as warehouse management, manufacturing or demand planning, or for sellers who do not import.
Which documents does MarginChief need?
MarginChief works from three document types: the purchase order, the supplier’s commercial invoice, and the freight, duty and brokerage bills. Upload them as PDFs and the extraction engine reads line items, quantities and surcharges automatically. No manual data entry is required. Document extraction currently supports PDFs up to five pages.
How does MarginChief allocate freight and duty across SKUs?
MarginChief distributes each shared charge across the SKUs in a shipment using an allocation basis such as weight, value or volume. The basis changes the result. Allocating $8,000 of ocean freight across one 40 ft container by weight loads the cost onto heavy, low-value items, while allocating by value loads it onto expensive ones, and the two methods can reverse which product looks most profitable. Every allocation stays traceable back to the freight bill it came from.
Does MarginChief estimate duty and tariffs before I ship?
No. MarginChief calculates actual landed cost from bills already received, rather than forecasting duty from HS codes before goods leave the supplier. For a pre-shipment duty estimate at checkout, a duty calculation tool is the right fit. MarginChief produces the real figure that belongs in COGS and inventory valuation after the goods land.
Does MarginChief work with Shopify?
Yes. MarginChief can sync data from a connected Shopify store on every plan, and the Enterprise plan supports multiple stores. This matters because Shopify’s Cost per item field is snapshotted at the moment of sale and cannot be corrected afterwards, so whatever goes in that box determines every margin report built on it.
Can I get the costs into QuickBooks, Xero or my ERP?
MarginChief exports finished unit costs as CSV on every plan, ready to import into QuickBooks Online, Xero or an inventory system. There is no direct two-way accounting integration today. Shopify is the only live sync.
Do I need an ERP to track landed cost?
No. Full trade ERPs handle landed cost as one module among many and suit importers running multiple warehouses, currencies and channels at volume. Importers who mainly need an accurate, defensible unit cost can use a dedicated tool alongside their existing accounting stack. MarginChief is built for that second case.
How is the output audit-ready?
Every freight, customs and duty allocation keeps a trail showing which source document and line item produced each component of a SKU’s unit cost. Cost history is retained per shipment without limit, so you can see what each batch cost and how unit cost has moved across shipments.