Overview

The costs of a green contract are the amounts that you pay in addition to the purchase price of the coffee, such as freight, customs duties, port charges, and trucking. This article shows how to record these costs against the contracted lots of a contract, and how to correct or remove them later.

Today, you can record fixed costs. A fixed cost is a cost that you know as an explicit amount, such as an invoiced freight charge.

This article is for green coffee buyers and finance teams who record logistics costs, and who replace estimated amounts with invoiced amounts when the invoice arrives. To create a contract and add contracted lots, see Green contracts and contracted lots.

Costs are available to every account that has the Green Contracts & Costs module. The module is included in Cropster Advanced and Enterprise, and is available as an add-on for Core and Scale. If you are interested in this module, reach out to our Customer Success team for more information.

Before you begin

To add, edit, or delete costs, you need permission to edit contracts. With permission to view contracts only, you can see the costs of a contract, but the Add cost, Edit, and Delete actions do not appear.

• The contract must have at least one contracted lot, and each contracted lot must have a contracted weight. Cropster uses the contracted weight to divide a cost between several lots.
• Costs are recorded in the default currency of your account.
• Every cost belongs to one or more contracted lots. A cost cannot be recorded against the contract as a whole.

View the costs of a contract

The Costs log lists every cost that is recorded against the contracted lots of a contract.

1. In the main navigation, click Contracts.
2. Click the contract to open the Contract details page.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page. The Costs tab is open by default and shows the Costs table.

The Payment schedules tab next to the Costs tab is still being built.

Each row in the Costs log shows one cost, with the following information:

• ID: the unique identifier of the cost, in the format CC-####.
• Date: the date on which the cost was incurred.
• Category: the type of cost, such as Freight or Customs duties.
• Contracted lot: the contracted lot that carries the cost.
• Amount: the amount recorded for the cost.
• Notes: any notes that were entered with the cost.

If no costs are recorded for the contract, the Costs log shows a message that there are no costs to show. You can still add a cost from this view.

Add a fixed cost

Enter the total amount of a cost once, and choose which contracted lots share it. Cropster creates a separate cost for each contracted lot that you select.

1. In the Costs log of the contract, click Add cost.
   
    
2. In Cost date, keep today's date or select the date on which the cost was incurred. The date cannot be empty.
3. In Cost type, keep Fixed. The Accrual option is not yet available.
4. In Cost category, select one category: Stuffing, Insurance, Port charges, Manifest fees, Freight, Customs duties, Outloading, Trucking, or Other.
5. In Applicable contracted lots, choose which lots share the cost:
   • To divide the cost between every contracted lot on the contract, keep All lots turned on.
   • To divide the cost between some of the lots, turn off All lots and select each lot that shares the cost.
   • To assign the whole cost to one lot, turn off All lots and select only that lot.
6. In Amount, enter the total amount of the cost. You can enter up to four decimal places. The amount cannot be negative.
7. Optional: In Notes, enter a note of up to 255 characters, such as an invoice number.
8. Review the preview. The preview shows one row for each selected lot, with the lot, its contracted weight, and the amount that will be recorded against that lot. The preview updates whenever you change the amount or the selected lots.
9. Click Create cost to create the costs.

Cropster returns you to the Contract details page and confirms that the costs were created. Each selected lot now has its own cost, with the same date, category, and notes, and with its share of the amount.

If the costs cannot be saved, an error message appears and your entries stay in the form, so that you can try again. To leave the form without creating a cost, click Cancel.

How Cropster divides a fixed cost between contracted lots

When you select more than one contracted lot, the total amount is divided between the lots in proportion to the contracted weight of each lot. A lot with more contracted weight carries a larger share of the cost. An equal split between lots is not yet available.

The following table shows an example. A freight cost of 1,000.00 is divided between two contracted lots:

Each share is rounded to four decimal places. The shares always add up to exactly the total amount that you entered, so no amount is lost or added by rounding.

After you create the costs, each cost is independent. If you later edit or delete one of them, the costs of the other lots stay as they are, and the original total is not divided again.

Edit a cost

Edit a cost to correct it, for example to replace an estimated amount with the invoiced amount.

1. In the Costs log, find the row of the cost.
2. Click Edit on that row. The Edit cost form opens with the ID of the cost and its current values.
   
3. Change one or more of these values: the cost date, the cost category, the amount, or the notes.
4. Click Update cost to save your changes.

Cropster returns you to the Costs log, which shows the updated values. If the change cannot be saved, an error message appears and your entries stay in the form, so that you can try again. To leave the form without changing the cost, click Cancel.

You cannot change the contracted lot or the cost type of an existing cost. To move a cost to a different lot, delete the cost and add it again for the correct lot.

Delete costs

You can delete one cost, or several costs in one action. A deleted cost cannot be restored.

Deleting a cost cannot be undone. If you created the cost for several lots at once, a deletion removes the cost of the selected lot only. The costs of the other lots stay as they are.

Delete a single cost

1. In the Costs log, find the row of the cost.
2. Click Delete on that row.
3. In the confirmation message, click Delete cost to delete the cost, or click Cancel to keep it.

The cost no longer appears in the Costs log.

Delete several costs at once

1. In the Costs log, select the checkbox on the row of each cost that you want to delete. The number of selected costs is shown.
2. Click Delete. This action is available only while at least one cost is selected.
   
3. In the confirmation message, click Delete costs to delete the selected costs, or click Cancel to keep them.

The selected costs no longer appear in the Costs log, and the selection is cleared. If the deletion cannot be completed, no cost is deleted, and every selected cost stays in the Costs log.

Current limitations

The Green Contracts & Costs module is under active development. The following capabilities are not yet available:

• Accrued costs that grow over time, such as storage or financing costs.
• An equal split of a total amount between contracted lots.
• A view that shows which costs were created together from one entry.
• Payment terms, payment schedules, and marking a cost as paid.
• Editing several costs at once.
• A history of changes to a cost, and restoring a deleted cost.

If a capability that you need is missing, contact Cropster support to confirm its status.