Set your default tariff items

What tariff items are for

A tariff item is one line you would put on an invoice. Description, unit, quantity, price.

The point of setting them up is speed. When a request comes in, your quote does not start from a blank page. The lines prefill from the tariff items on that service, so most of the work is checking quantities and adjusting for the job in front of you.

A service with coverage and no tariff can still be found and requested. It just costs you twenty minutes of typing every time somebody asks.

Step 1. Open the Tariff Items tab

Open a service from your Service catalog and choose the Tariff Items tab. The number on it is how many lines the service has.

A zero there is worth acting on. It means every quote for this service is being built from nothing.

Choose Add Tariff Line to open the form. It has two sections, Item Details and Pricing.

Step 2. Fill in Item Details

The top half of the form describes the line. No prices yet.

The Active toggle sits at the very top and is on by default. Turning it off hides the line from new jobs without deleting it.

Notes travel with the line

Notes are worth using, as long as you know where they end up. A note attached to a tariff line carries through onto the quote, where the buyer can read it.

That makes it the right place for a condition that would otherwise need a phone call. Minimum charge applies below ten tons. Rate valid during port working hours. Excludes overtime.

Step 3. Set the currency

Currency is the first field in the Pricing section. It opens on your organization's default currency, which is right for most line items, and the list holds the currencies enabled for your organization.

Currency sits on the line items, not the service. One service can hold line items in several currencies at once, which matches how providers actually work: local disbursements in local money, some line items in dollars.

Step 4. Choose a Billing Category

Below currency sits the one question that changes everything under it, and everything that happens to the line afterwards.

This is the fork in the form. Read the table below before you choose, because the two paths are for genuinely different jobs, not two ways of doing the same one.

Step 5. Add a billable line

Choose Billable and you get two price fields side by side.

Selling Price is required. It is what you charge, and it is what the buyer sees on the quote.

Cost Price is optional. It is what this line costs you. Nobody outside your organization sees it. Its job is to give PortzApp both ends of the line so it can show you the margin.

Markup is the gap between the two, and it is internal as well. You never have to work it out yourself.

How markup behaves

Add Markup stays greyed out until you enter a Cost Price. There is nothing to mark up until a cost has been entered, so if the checkbox looks disabled, that is why.

Once you enable it:

• Percentage takes a value between 0 and 100. Your Selling Price becomes the cost plus that percentage of the cost.
• Fixed takes a specific amount. Your Selling Price becomes the cost plus that amount.

Change the markup and the Selling Price updates immediately. Untick Add Markup, and the Selling Price returns to your Cost Price.

Tax and the Pricing Preview

Add Tax is a checkbox near the bottom, and it is available on both kinds of line item. Tick it and enter a Tax Percentage. The Tax Amount beside it is read only and works itself out from the price, the quantity and the percentage.

Below everything sits the Pricing Preview. It updates as you type and is the fastest way to check you have not put a decimal in the wrong place. Read it before you save.

Step 6. Add a non-billable line

Choose Non-billable and the form simplifies. The two price fields collapse into one, labelled Unit Price, and the markup section disappears. There is nothing to mark up, because you are not selling this.

Then choose the type:

• Revenue, described as income received. Money that comes in against this service but is not charged to this buyer.
• Expense, described as cost incurred. Something you pay out to deliver the service.

Fill in the Unit Price, quantity and unit exactly as you would on a billable line. Currency and tax work the same way here too. The difference is entirely in where the number goes afterwards.

What non-billable lines are for

A non-billable line never appears on a quote. The buyer is not charged for it, does not see it, and has no way of knowing it exists. It is not a zero-priced line on their document. It is not on their document at all.

It is there so the service can carry what it genuinely costs you to deliver. Port dues you pay out. A subcontractor. Transport. Time from your own team. Anything that shapes what the job is worth without ever being billed.

The reason to bother is that it makes the margin real. A service priced at a thousand dollars with six hundred of unrecorded internal cost looks like a good service until it is not. Put those costs in as non-billable lines and the number you are looking at is the number you are actually earning.

Convert line items into your default currency

Editing one line's currency is a small job. Moving several is not, and that is what conversion is for. It changes the currency and works the new amounts out at a rate, instead of leaving you to recalculate every line by hand.

The option only appears when there is something to convert. If every line on a service is already in your organization's default currency, you will not see it, and there is nothing to do. When some lines are not, the page says so and tells you how many.