Frequently Asked Questions

FIFO (First In, First Out) COGS means the first stock you bought is the first stock counted as sold. Landara builds a cost layer each time you receive inventory, at your true landed cost including freight and duty, then draws down those layers in order as Shopify orders ship.

Because Landara syncs your Shopify orders, every sale is costed automatically against the correct layers. You always know your real cost of goods sold, not a rough average or a last-known price.

Yes. Landara is the purpose-built replacement for the COGS side of Shopify Stocky. Stocky has gone: Shopify retired it and directs former Stocky users to manage inventory in the Shopify admin and Shopify POS, which leaves sellers with no built-in way to track cost of goods sold.

Landara fills that gap without forcing you into a full inventory platform. Shopify keeps tracking quantity; Landara costs every order with perpetual FIFO (or moving average) and produces a bookkeeper-ready journal. It's life after Stocky without a rip-and-replace migration.

Yes, on your command. Landara produces the period COGS journal (Dr COGS / Cr Inventory) and posts it to Xero or QuickBooks for you when you tell it to, or hands you a CSV. It never posts silently or without your say-so.

This keeps you in control of your books and your period-end close: Landara does the FIFO maths that Shopify and a spreadsheet can't, then posts the journal on your timing, or exports it if you'd rather post it yourself.

Landara supports both. The right choice depends on your accounting method and your stock:

FIFO gives the most accurate per-order COGS when your landed costs change between shipments. If you're unsure, FIFO is the common default for importers.

COGS plans are sized by how many Shopify orders you sell each month, never charged per order and never per seat.

Pick the tier that fits your current volume and move up only as you grow. Everyone on your team is included at no extra cost.

The deposit is fixed at the rate on the day you paid it. The balance converts at the rate on the day the goods arrive. Anything you pay after that at a different rate is a currency gain or loss in your P&L, not part of your stock cost. That is the international standard (IAS 21, AASB 121 in Australia, ASC 830 in the US), and it is the same in substance everywhere.

Landara records every supplier payment on a purchase order with its own rate from the day it was paid, costs the stock at receipt under that rule, and, when a fully paid order is finalised from its own lines, costs it at exactly what left your bank. Worked example and what Landara books, in the help centre.

The stock has arrived on a purchase order and is costed at the order price, and the supplier has not yet been invoiced or the order finalised. Landara writes that layer the day the goods are received so your sales are costed straight away instead of waiting for the bill. It cannot be edited by hand.

Finalise on the order, or costing the supplier invoice on the linked shipment, corrects the layer in place and the badge goes away; once the bill is in your books the order costs itself. Until then the valuation page lists the same stock as "received, not yet invoiced". Purchase orders end to end.

Landed cost is the total price of getting a product from your supplier to your warehouse, ready for sale. It includes your product cost, international freight, customs duties, insurance, and handling fees: everything it takes to get goods onto your shelf.

For most importers, landed cost is 20-40% higher than the supplier invoice price. If you're pricing products based only on what your supplier charges, you're likely understating your true costs.

Landed cost includes six main components: product cost, freight, customs duty, insurance, customs clearance fees, and handling/delivery charges.

Missing any of these components means your product costs are understated.

To calculate landed cost, add all costs from supplier to warehouse: product cost + freight + duty + insurance + clearance fees + handling.

The formula per unit:

Landed Cost Per Unit = (Product Cost + All Import Costs) ÷ Quantity

Example: If you buy 1,000 units at $10 each ($10,000), pay $1,200 freight, $800 duty, and $400 in other fees, your landed cost is $12,400 ÷ 1,000 = $12.40 per unit (not $10.00).

Try our free landed cost calculators to calculate your per-unit costs instantly, no signup required.

FOB (Free On Board) is the price at the supplier's port; landed cost is the total price including all costs to get goods to your warehouse.

If your supplier quotes $10 FOB, your landed cost will typically be $12-$14 once all import costs are added.

CIF (Cost, Insurance, Freight) includes product cost, insurance, and freight to the destination port. Landed cost adds customs duty, clearance fees, and delivery to your warehouse.

CIF gets goods to the port. Landed cost gets goods to your shelf, ready to sell. See our detailed comparison: CIF vs Landed Cost.

Yes. Each supplier's own code links to your one Shopify SKU, and every delivery from every supplier sits in one first-in, first-out cost queue under it. Sales draw from the oldest stock first, whichever supplier it came from, so the stock you bought at $12 is never repriced because the next supplier charged $10.

Links are kept per supplier and code, each with its own pack size, and Cost Layers shows which supplier every layer came from. A spreadsheet holding one cost per SKU cannot do this. Several suppliers, one Shopify SKU.

Yes. Set a pack size once, per supplier and code: × 6 for a carton of 6. Five cartons at $60 are then recorded as 30 units at $10, and that is the cost per item pushed to Shopify, with 30 units added to stock if you choose to add quantity. The landed cost is worked out on the supplier's own quantities first, so the line's total value never changes.

Landara remembers it for every later shipment from that supplier, and the Pack column on your supplier SKU links shows every pack you have set. Pack sizes.

Yes. Put every supplier invoice from one container on one shipment. Each keeps its own supplier, exchange rate, purchase orders and bill, and a freight or customs bill added to the shipment is shared across all of them. Group invoices you have already uploaded from Supplier invoices, or drop several files on New Shipment at once.

However many invoices and bills it holds, it counts as one shipment on your plan. Several supplier invoices on one shipment.

No. Shipping or handling a supplier prints on its own invoice stays with that invoice's products. It is what that supplier charged to get its goods to you. A separate freight, duty or customs bill added to the shipment is the one that is shared across every invoice on it.

Yes. Landara reads every one of your order numbers the invoice quotes, including a Reference that reads as an order number, and links the invoice to each matching open order. Where the lines are printed in a block per order, the shipment shows a heading above each block, and the bill in Xero lists every order in its reference. If the scan could not tell, set the orders on the invoice yourself. One supplier invoice, several purchase orders.

Yes. Create it from the invoice. On a calculated shipment, the invoice's row in the Publish panel has Create purchase order: Landara makes the order in Landara from the invoice's lines, linked to it, at its exchange rate, and marks it received because the goods are already in. Send it to Xero from the order page like any other. Create a purchase order from a supplier invoice.

No, and that is deliberate. The invoice often arrives while the goods are still at sea, and receiving is what adds the stock in Shopify. The invoice's units get their cost straight away; when the goods are in, one click on Receive, on the shipment or the order, records exactly what that invoice covers. An invoice for 6 of the 10 you ordered leaves the order partly received, waiting for the rest. Receive goods from a supplier invoice.

Landara is perpetual FIFO cost of goods sold for Shopify. It reads your Shopify orders and costs every sale first-in, first-out (or by moving average), then produces a bookkeeper-ready journal (Dr COGS / Cr Inventory) and posts it to Xero or QuickBooks for you, on your command, or hands you a CSV. Shopify keeps tracking quantity; Landara adds the accurate cost layer on top.

The accuracy comes from landed cost: Landara reads freight and duty off your invoices and lands those costs into the cost of each delivery of stock, so your COGS reflects what goods really cost to land, not a rough average. That is the job a cost spreadsheet cannot do, because it never sees a sale.

Yes. This is a core feature of Landara. Real import shipments often involve multiple cost documents from different vendors: a freight forwarder invoice, a customs broker bill, a delivery charge, and more.

In Landara, you create a shipment from your purchase order, then attach as many extra cost documents as you need. Each document is processed by AI independently, and all costs are combined when you run your landed cost calculation.

AI document extraction uses a two-stage pipeline: Microsoft Azure Document Intelligence reads your documents with high-accuracy OCR, then xAI Grok structures the extracted text into usable data. Our system extracts:

• Vendor/supplier name
• Invoice number and date
• Line items with descriptions
• Individual cost amounts
• Currency (AUD, USD, EUR, etc.)
• Cost type classification (freight, duty, insurance, clearance)

Each extracted field includes a confidence score (0-100%). Low-confidence items are flagged for your review, and you can correct any mistakes before proceeding. Your corrections help improve future extractions.

Landara supports a variety of document formats:

For best results, ensure your documents are clear and legible. The AI handles varying formats from different freight forwarders and customs brokers, but higher quality images yield higher confidence scores.

Yes. Landara's AI extraction works with documents in any language, including German, Maltese, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, and more. Our two-stage pipeline (Azure OCR + AI structuring) handles multilingual text natively.

Vendor names and descriptions are preserved in their original language, while cost categories and data structure are normalized to English for consistent processing and reporting.

Not to start. Shopify is the connection Landara needs. Your accounting software is where the result goes:

1. With Xero or QuickBooks connected: Landara posts the period's Dr COGS / Cr Inventory journal on your command, and can publish freight and customs invoices as bills with the original attached.
2. Without one: the FIFO cost ledger, the COGS report and inventory valuation all work the same, and you export the journal as a CSV for your bookkeeper to enter.

Learn more about the Xero and QuickBooks Online integrations.

One currency: your organisation's native currency. Every cost layer, valuation, COGS figure and journal is expressed in it, so any two numbers in the app can be compared without checking which currency each one is in. If you install from the Shopify App Store, Landara reads your store's own currency and uses it, so most merchants never see the question.

Costs on a foreign-currency supplier invoice are converted before they are stored, at the exchange rate on the document or on its shipment.

Set it before you seed your cost layers. Changing it later applies to new cost layers only: costs already entered keep the currency they were stamped with and are not converted. Full detail in What currency Landara uses.

Landara does one job well: it costs the Shopify inventory you buy and resell, using the movements Shopify reports. A few common setups fall outside that, and we'd rather tell you up front:

Multiple stores sharing one inventory pool. Landara costs each store's own Shopify movements on their own. If several storefronts draw down a single shared stock pool, a full inventory system (Cin7, Unleashed, Katana) is the better fit.

Other channels selling the same stock. Landara costs the orders Shopify reports. If the same inventory also sells on Amazon, eBay, or wholesale, those sales deplete stock outside Shopify, so your COGS would be incomplete. You'd want a multichannel IMS.

Manufacturing from raw materials. Landara doesn't handle bills of materials, assembly, or work in progress, so turning raw materials into finished goods needs a manufacturing or MRP tool like Katana.

You already run a full IMS. If you already run Cin7, Unleashed, DEAR, or similar, that system already tracks inventory cost and COGS, and Landara would overlap with it rather than add anything.

Landara supports allocation by value (recommended), by quantity, by weight and by volume. Weight needs a weight recorded per SKU, and volume a volume per line. Here's how each works:

1. Allocation by Value (Recommended Default)

Costs are distributed proportionally based on each line item's dollar value relative to the total PO value.

allocated_cost = total_cost × (line_value / po_total_value)

Example:
- Total freight cost: $1,000
- PO Total value: $10,000
- Line item A value: $4,000 (40%)
- Line item B value: $6,000 (60%)

Allocation:
- Line A gets: $1,000 × 0.40 = $400
- Line B gets: $1,000 × 0.60 = $600

2. Allocation by Quantity

Costs are distributed equally based on the number of units, regardless of their individual value.

allocated_cost = total_cost × (line_qty / po_total_qty)

Example:
- Total freight cost: $500
- PO Total quantity: 100 units
- Line item A: 40 units (40%)
- Line item B: 60 units (60%)

Allocation:
- Line A gets: $500 × 0.40 = $200
- Line B gets: $500 × 0.60 = $300

The right allocation method depends on your cost type:

Choosing the right allocation method directly impacts your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and gross margins for each product. Incorrect allocation can lead to:

• Mispriced products: Setting selling prices based on inaccurate unit costs
• Margin blindness: Not knowing which products are actually profitable
• Tax issues: Incorrect inventory valuation for tax purposes
• Audit problems: Inconsistent methodology that can not be defended

Yes, weight-based and volume-based allocation are both available on a shipment. These methods are particularly useful for:

• Sea freight: Often charged by weight or cubic meter
• Air freight: Typically charged by dimensional or actual weight
• Mixed shipments: Heavy vs. bulky items with different shipping characteristics

To use weight-based allocation, you'll need a weight for each SKU. If one is missing, Landara asks for it on the shipment before it allocates, rather than guessing.

Not within one shipment. Each calculation applies one method to the shipment's costs: by value, quantity, weight or volume. You set a default in Settings and can change it per shipment, so a bulky container can go by volume while a high-value air shipment goes by value.

Landara uses flat, seatless pricing. You pay one price for your whole team, and the COGS tiers are sized by how many Shopify orders you sell each month:

Every paid plan can be paid monthly or yearly, and paying yearly saves 17%. You choose the interval on Shopify's plan selection page, and the 30-day free trial applies either way. Free has no yearly option because there is nothing to prepay.

Pricing is flat and seatless, never per seat and never per order. Add as many team members as you like on any plan; you only move up a tier when your Shopify order volume grows.

Yes. Every paid plan is sold monthly or yearly, and paying yearly saves 17%:

• COGS: $49/month, or US$490/year, save 17%
• COGS Growth: $89/month, or US$890/year, save 17%
• COGS Scale: $179/month, or US$1,790/year, save 17%

You pick the interval on Shopify's plan selection page when you start your trial or change plan, and the 30-day free trial applies either way. Either interval is charged by Shopify on your regular Shopify bill, and you can switch between them or cancel any time from your Shopify admin. The Free plan has no yearly option, because there is nothing to prepay.

Nearly everything. The free plan is not a crippled trial and it has no time limit:

• A full perpetual FIFO cost ledger against every Shopify order, fulfilment and return, up to 250 orders a month
• COGS report and inventory valuation, plus reconcile against your Shopify on-hand
• Stocktake with barcode scanning, up to 25 counted lines per count
• 10 costed shipments a month: AI extraction of freight and duty, allocated per SKU (calculations themselves are unlimited)
• Shopify, Xero and QuickBooks connections
• CSV export of everything, and it keeps working even after you cancel

What the free plan cannot do is post and automate: paid plans add posting journals into Xero or QuickBooks (COGS, revaluation, write-down and shrinkage), automatic journals on each Shopify payout, unlimited costed shipments and stocktake lines, and stocktake filters by collection. On the free plan you can still see every number, check it, and export it.

No credit card required to sign up, and no time limit, so sitting on the free plan costs you nothing and does not use up the 30-day trial on a paid plan.

Neither. Landara is flat and seatless. You pay one price for your whole team, and you are never charged per order.

• No per-seat fees: Invite as many team members as you like on any plan. The price does not change
• No per-order fees: The COGS tiers include a monthly Shopify order allowance (500 / 2,000 / 10,000); you only move up a tier as your volume grows

Your Shopify and accounting connections, documents, and COGS history are shared across everyone on the account, making collaboration seamless without adding cost.

Better than that. The Free plan has no time limit, so you can keep a full FIFO cost ledger, run the COGS report and export everything for as long as you like. Paid plans then add a 30-day free trial, deliberately long enough to cover a whole month end close before you pay anything.

That gives you time to connect Xero or QuickBooks, cost real orders, and check our number against your accountant's before committing. If you don't upgrade, you simply stay on the free plan and keep your history.

Nothing is charged during the trial. When it ends, Shopify charges your store the plan price you picked, monthly or yearly, on your regular Shopify bill, and keeps charging each interval until you cancel. Cancel before the trial ends from your Shopify admin and you are never billed.

Payments are processed through the Shopify App Store as part of your Shopify subscription. Supported methods include:

• All major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex)
• PayPal

Shopify handles billing and invoicing automatically as part of your Shopify subscription. Charges appear on your regular Shopify invoice.

Yes, you can cancel anytime with no cancellation fees. When you cancel:

• You keep access until the end of your billing period
• Your data is retained for 30 days after expiry
• You can export your calculation history before leaving
• You can downgrade to free tier instead of canceling

Yes. A payment recorded on a purchase order can be sent to Xero as spend money to your Supplier deposits account, and is applied to the supplier bill at its own rate when the bill exists. A payment made once the bill is already in Xero goes straight onto the bill. Payments your bookkeeper makes in Xero come back to the order, and if the bill was raised in Xero from the purchase order Landara sent, Landara adopts it.

With QuickBooks Online, payments are recorded on the order only for now. Every path a payment can take.

Live now:

• Shopify - Syncs your orders and inventory so Landara can cost every sale with perpetual FIFO (or moving average)
• Xero - Full integration (publish POs and bills, sync contacts, export landed costs)
• QuickBooks Online - Publish POs and bills, attach originals

Landara produces the period COGS journal (Dr COGS / Cr Inventory) and posts it to Xero or QuickBooks for you, on your command, or hands you a CSV. You always control when it posts.

When you connect Xero, Landara pushes your cost of goods sold, and the documents behind it:

• Post the COGS journal: The period's Dr COGS / Cr Inventory manual journal, posted on your command
• Create Bills: Push your freight invoices and extra cost documents as bills in Xero
• Create Purchase Orders: Push uploaded POs to Xero if not already there
• Attach Documents: Original PDFs attached to the created transactions
• Sync Contacts: Match or create supplier contacts

Nothing reaches Xero until you say so. Landara pushes; it does not quietly change records you already have.

Two things: the COGS journal, and your original documents.

• The COGS journal: One consolidated Dr COGS / Cr Inventory journal per period, costed first-in, first-out, posted when you choose
• Bills: Your actual freight invoices and extra cost documents, with the original PDF attached
• Not published: The per-SKU and per-order detail behind the journal. It stays in Landara as the evidence your accountant drills into

Yes. Landara runs on QuickBooks Online too, or on no accounting connection at all:

1. Connect Shopify, and every order is costed first-in, first-out
2. Give each delivery of stock its cost, with freight and duty landed in
3. Review the COGS report and inventory valuation each period
4. Export the journal as a CSV for your bookkeeper to enter

Yes. QuickBooks Online works the same way as Xero:

• Publish Purchase Orders to QBO
• Publish Bills from your freight invoices
• Attach original documents to transactions
• Export landed cost and COGS data

As with Xero, Landara posts the COGS journal to QuickBooks for you when you choose, or hands you a CSV. It never posts to your books without your say-so; you control the timing.

Shopify integration is live. Landara connects to your store, and Shopify stays the source of truth for quantity while Landara adds the cost layer on top:

• Reads your Shopify orders, fulfilments and stock movements
• Costs every order with perpetual FIFO (or moving average)
• Rolls your landed cost (freight + duty) into each cost layer
• Produces a ready-to-post COGS journal for Xero or QuickBooks

AI extraction achieves 90-98% accuracy on standard freight invoices, with every field showing a confidence score so you can verify uncertain items. Accuracy varies based on:

Every extracted field shows a confidence score. Fields below 80% are highlighted for your review. You always have the final say before costs are used in calculations.

You can easily correct any extraction errors:

1. Review the extracted data in our verification screen
2. Click any field to edit the value
3. Add missing line items or delete incorrect ones
4. Confirm the corrected data before proceeding

If extraction fails completely (rare), you have several options:

• Re-upload: Try a higher quality scan or photo
• Manual entry: Enter the costs directly into our form
• Contact support: We can investigate specific document formats

No. The Free plan's allowance counts shipments, not extractions: 10 costed shipments a month. Paid plans are unlimited.

• A shipment counts once, however many documents it needs (the supplier invoice, the forwarder, the broker)
• Re-reading a document is free, so retrying a poor scan never costs another unit
• A shipment counts in the month you created it, even if its freight invoice arrives weeks later
• Running or re-running a landed cost calculation is always free

The AI performs best on typical commercial freight documents:

• Freight forwarder invoices (sea/air)
• Customs broker statements
• Shipping line invoices
• Duty and tax assessments
• Insurance certificates with premiums

Tips for best results:

• PDF exports are better than scans
• Avoid photographing documents at an angle
• Ensure all text is readable
• Include the full document (headers and totals help validation)

Yes. All data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256), with row-level security ensuring users only access their own data. Additional measures include:

• Encryption in transit: All data encrypted with TLS 1.3
• Encryption at rest: Database and files encrypted with AES-256
• Row Level Security: Database policies ensure users only access their own data
• No service key bypass: We don't use admin keys that bypass security
• OAuth 2.0: Secure authentication with Xero (never stores your Xero password)

Landara uses a three-stage AI pipeline, each handling a different part of document processing:

Important: Your original documents are only sent to Azure for OCR. xAI and OpenAI only receive extracted text, never your original document images. None of these providers use your data for model training.

Azure Document Intelligence is GDPR, ISO 27018, ISO 27701, and HIPAA compliant. Data is processed in the AU East region and automatically deleted within 24 hours.

Your data is stored on infrastructure provided by:

Supabase and Vercel are SOC 2 compliant with enterprise-grade security. Your permanent data (documents, calculations, account info) is stored in Supabase. AI providers only retain data temporarily for processing.

Yes, but with your control. Uploaded documents are stored to:

• Allow you to review extractions later
• Provide audit trail for your calculations
• Enable re-processing if needed

You can delete individual documents or your entire account at any time. Documents are stored in encrypted Supabase Storage with access controlled by your user credentials.

Yes. You have full control over your data:

• Delete individual documents: Remove specific uploads
• Delete calculations: Remove saved calculations
• Disconnect integrations: Revoke Xero access
• Delete account: Complete data removal within 30 days

Account deletion removes all your data from our systems, including backups, within 30 days.

Yes. We comply with GDPR requirements:

• Right to access: Export all your data anytime
• Right to deletion: Delete your account and all data
• Data minimization: We only collect necessary data
• Consent: Clear consent for data processing
• Data Processing Agreement: Available for business customers

Shopify handles all billing and payment data in a GDPR-compliant manner as part of the Shopify App Store.

Landara calculates landed costs using a clear, auditable formula:

For each line item in your Purchase Order:

1. Base Cost = Unit Price × Quantity

2. For each cost type (freight, duty, insurance, etc.):
   If allocation method = "By Value":
     Allocated Cost = Total Cost × (Line Value / PO Total Value)

   If allocation method = "By Quantity":
     Allocated Cost = Total Cost × (Line Qty / PO Total Qty)

3. Total Landed Cost = Base Cost + Sum(All Allocated Costs)

4. Landed Unit Cost = Total Landed Cost / Quantity

Example Calculation

Purchase Order with 2 line items and $1,200 in freight costs:

Widget A: ($1,000 + $480) / 100 = $14.80 per unit (48% markup)
Widget B: ($1,500 + $720) / 50 = $44.40 per unit (48% markup)

Landara combines costs from all documents linked to a shipment into a single landed cost calculation. Here's how it works:

1. Upload your purchase order. AI extracts line items and any embedded costs (e.g., shipping charges on the PO itself)
2. Upload additional cost documents: freight invoices, customs bills, broker statements, delivery receipts
3. AI extracts and categorises costs from each document independently (freight, duty, clearance, insurance, other)
4. When you calculate, the freight, duty and customs bills are pooled by category and allocated across every line on the shipment using your chosen method. Shipping printed on a supplier's own invoice stays with that invoice's lines

Yes. Saved calculations can be:

• Viewed: See full breakdown anytime
• Duplicated: Copy as starting point for new calculation
• Adjusted: Modify costs, allocation methods, or line items
• Re-exported: Generate new exports with updated data

Each edit creates a new version, preserving your audit trail. You can view the history of changes for any calculation.

Landara supports multiple export formats:

CSV exports include all line items with complete cost breakdowns, suitable for import into any system that accepts CSV.

Unlimited, on every plan including free. Nothing expires and nothing is deleted.

This matters more than it sounds. A FIFO cost ledger works by replaying every movement in order, so its accuracy compounds with the length of its history. Deleting a free user's history would quietly break the very number they came for.