My factory quote and my actual landed cost are miles apart, what am I missing?
The short answer
The usual gaps: freight and insurance (often quoted separately or not at all by the factory), customs duty and IGST (which the factory has no visibility into), packaging that wasn't in the original quote, and a currency-conversion buffer for INR/USD movement between quote and payment. Build a landed-cost spreadsheet per SKU with every line item named, and update it every time freight rates, duty slabs or the exchange rate move, not once and forget it.
A quick summary to orient you. The real value is below: the resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it, not us.
Here are the resources
Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time. India-specific ones carry a badge.
Why we picked it
A watch-along build of an actual landed-cost-and-margin spreadsheet, useful for founders who want to see the formulas built live rather than copy a static template.
Why we picked it
Directly connects landed cost to pricing mistakes, the gap founders hit when their factory quote and actual cost turn out to be miles apart.
Why we picked it
An ecommerce-accounting platform's clear breakdown of what belongs in landed cost versus COGS, the exact confusion that quietly wrecks new founders' margins.
