Landed Cost for Türkiye Imports: How to Calculate the True Unit Cost

A foreign-owned importer brings in 10,000 USD of goods and treats that as the unit cost. But by the time the goods reach the warehouse, freight, insurance, customs duty, demurrage, inland transport and broker fees have piled on top. The real cost is often 15–30% above the invoice price. Price your product without seeing that gap and you can be losing money while believing you're profitable. This is what landed cost solves.

What landed cost is

Landed cost is the practice of including all costs incurred until a product is sellable/usable into its unit cost. It answers not "what did I pay the supplier" but "what did it cost me in total to get this item onto my shelf."

It's also correct accounting: inventory cost should include the expenditure required to bring the item to its present location and condition. So freight and customs aren't simply expensed — they belong in the cost of the related inventory.

Typical landed-cost components

Not every import has all of these, but the typical components are:

• Goods value (FOB/EXW price): the base amount paid to the seller.
• Freight: sea/air/road transport.
• Insurance: cargo insurance.
• Customs duty and fiscal charges: import duties and funds accruing at customs.
• Customs brokerage and commissions: intermediary service fees.
• Port / demurrage / terminal charges: waiting, unloading, storage.
• Inland transport: moving goods from port/customs to your warehouse.

Note: recoverable taxes such as import VAT are generally not added to cost (they're recovered via the VAT mechanism). Which items belong in inventory cost should be confirmed with your Turkish CPA.

The real challenge: allocating costs to products

If one container holds five different products, how do you split the freight across them? This is the technical heart of landed cost. Common allocation keys:

• By value: the cost is split in proportion to goods value. Sensible for insurance and value-driven charges.
• By weight (kg/ton): usually the most accurate key for freight — weight drives transport.
• By volume (m³): for light but bulky goods priced on space, volume is fairer.
• By quantity (units): simple and often sufficient for similar items.

The right key is whatever factor most drives the cost. Applying a single key to every charge (e.g., everything by value) usually produces wrong unit costs.

A quick example

Say a container holds two products and you paid 20,000 TRY freight. Product A is light but expensive; Product B is heavy but cheap. Allocate freight by value and the expensive A absorbs most of it — yet the real driver of transport cost is the heavy B. Allocate by weight and B takes its true share. The same container, with a different key, produces completely different unit costs. That is precisely why the key choice directly affects your pricing.

What happens if you ignore landed cost

• Mispricing: you believe unit cost is lower than it is; your margin exists on paper, not in reality.
• Wrong product decisions: you treat a genuinely low-margin product as "profitable" and push it.
• Inventory value errors: the inventory figure on your balance sheet is understated; statements don't reflect reality.

ERP automation

The problem with tracking landed cost in spreadsheets is that the extra-cost invoices (freight, customs) usually arrive days after the goods — by which time the goods are in stock, perhaps already sold. The right system opens an import file (batch), attaches extra-cost invoices to it as they arrive, and updates unit costs retroactively using your chosen key.

The Birasyo Foreign Trade module gathers all extra costs (freight, insurance, customs, commission) per import file and allocates them across products by value/weight/volume. The Inventory module posts that allocation into the cost layer, so each product gets its true landed cost. On the Purchasing side, when extra-cost invoices match the file, unit costs update automatically — no manual spreadsheet required.

Summary

Landed cost computes an imported item's true cost not from the invoice price but from every charge incurred until it reaches the warehouse. The trick is to allocate each charge by the factor that drives it (freight by weight, insurance by value). A company that prices without this calculation manages margin by guesswork. With a system that attaches extra-cost invoices to the import file as they arrive, the true unit cost forms automatically and correctly.

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This article is general information. Confirm which cost components belong in inventory cost and how recoverable VAT is treated with your Turkish CPA.