Manufacturing & Import — Food & Beverage
Food Importer: Landed Cost & Lot Tracking Configuration
San Gabriel Valley, CA
The Challenge
A food importer and repackager sourcing ingredients from multiple Pacific Rim suppliers had no landed cost allocation in their existing system — vendor invoice price was used as inventory cost, significantly understating true product cost once freight, duties, and tariffs were considered. Lot tracking existed but wasn't consistently tied to finished goods, creating recall-readiness gaps.
Our Approach
- Configured Sage 100's landed cost functionality to allocate freight, duty, and tariff costs proportionally across incoming shipments by item.
- Rebuilt the item master's costing configuration to reflect true landed cost rather than vendor invoice price alone.
- Implemented full lot tracking from raw material receipt through production batches to finished goods shipments, enabling forward and backward lot traceability.
- Provided bilingual (English/Mandarin) training for warehouse and production staff on new lot recording procedures.
The Result
Gross margin reporting on imported SKUs shifted to reflect true landed cost, revealing previously hidden margin compression on several product lines. Full lot traceability from supplier to customer shipment was established for the first time.
