I just took over as the system administrator this month and know very little about the invoice and Finance side of Epicor. i have been tasked with figuring out how to implement the trade war tariffs that Trump has threaten to place on Canada. Whether or not if they ever happen i need to add them in case they happen, so that we are ready. Our Brokerage has said that we will only have 7 days to pay the Tariffs bill instead of the usual 30 days and we are planning on demanding the payment before we ship to any US customers.
I have been looking in Epicor as well as online and it seemed like the most correct way to implement tariffs is by using the Container Landed module. We do not own this module, and therefore can not use it. My next idea is to use misc charges on the Invoice to charge the customer for the Tariffs, and a BPM on the Shipment modules to prevent shipment of the order until the customer has paid the Tariffs for the brokerage.
Does anyone know a better way to implement Tariffs without the Container module?
The tariffs are paid by the importer of record if you are shipping to a US customer and you aren’t he importer of record you don’t pay any tariffs…
But no, there is no mechanism in Epicor to “charge” tariffs to a customer a BPM like you suggested may be the best solution
If you are importing then, yep tariffs are going to effect you and if you don’t have landed cost then you are correct misc charges would be the only way.
The only problem with that is that you can’t disburse the tariff across all the parts in the PO that may be effected like the Landed cost module can do. That means that your part costs won’t truly reflect the true cost of the landed part. Which in turn will mess with your margins. I mean you could but it would get pretty complicated if you wanted to take that all into account in a bpm or a function.
The only manual way to fix that would be to reprice you PO’s once you know the true cost, which is a crappy way to do it. Time consuming and not to mention doing it that way you can’t see the split of mtl cost vs the burden (Indirect and tariffs) on the parts
Since we handle the Shipping for our US customer, we use the brokerage company to import the goods into America. This means that we are actually importing the goods for our customer, not exporting them to America. I am told this is not too uncommon of a set up. Hence why we need the customer to pay the fee to us, since we are the one paying the import fees.
Are you aware of any built in ways to prevent shipments besides credit hold and aging hold or do you think it will need to be fully custom solution for holding the shipment until the partial payment is made.
The only way I can think of is Miscellaneous charges with a charge code set up as Tariffs. That is how we are handling ordering oversea items on our POs. Thanks Trump!
Would I be correct in saying they will probably no cheaper than purchasing parts with tariffs.
You could argue there is a lot less paperwork…
FYI it appears that where I live is going to get swept up in all this Macroeconomic Drama.
What I say to that… Please come and Holiday in Australia and support our economy. It’s a short 17hr trip from LA to Melbourne or 14.5 to Brisbane… You get nearly 2AUD for 1 USD… so it’s a good deal.
We are looking into options for tariffs and what the actual needs are… one concern that I already thought of is that in some cases, individual states may consider a tariff as taxable, so even if you think you are simply passing on the tariff as a misc charge, you may still need to charge additional sales tax.
(Note, I am NOT a tax accountant, but did a little research on this… i dont want anyone to get in trouble with their local tax authorities).
As someone already pointed out, the tariff functionality is burried in the Landed Cost functionality, which is part of Container Receipts. It sounds like some of you might want to have tariffs included in regular PO Receipts? and it sounds like you want this extra “tax” to be somehow exposed on sales orders as well?
Tim, Amazing as usual.
I also am not sure if Tariffs are subject to sales tax in any state, but Really doubt it.
Avalara is hosting a live webinar series called Trade and Tariff Tuesdays, which may provide some answers. Join Trade and Tariff Tuesdays: Stay current on global trade issues
And contrary to popular belief, not every living creature in Australia is out to kill you, just delinquent machete wielding youths and politicians too scared to clamp down on lax bail laws in case it effects their hope of being re-elected…
The drop bears and bunyips will only hurt you if you let them.
there is no fast-tracked soluion “Yet”… the laws and rules are changing so fast, I think we need to let things settle a bit. Like i said before we do support it through landed cost functionality.
We took a similar stance here and will just live with manual misc. charges for now, rather than rush into a customization project or purchase of a new module.
share any plans