Starshipit Landed Costs

Offer transparent pricing for international orders by calculating, charging, and remitting duties and taxes upfront.

When selling internationally, a common challenge is unexpected import costs. Starshipit Landed Costs Guarentee (LCG) removes guesswork by calculating, collecting, and remitting all landed charges on your behalf—so customers see the full cost at checkout and aren’t charged again on delivery.

What is a landed cost?

The landed cost is the total cost of getting an order from your store to the customer’s door. It includes:

• Product cost
• Shipping and insurance
• Customs duties
• Import taxes (e.g. VAT, GST)
• Handling and remittance fees

What is Starshipit LCG?

Landed Cost Guarantee (LCG) ensures duties and taxes are calculated accurately and prepaid. You choose which destination countries use LCG; orders to those countries are automatically sent DDP (Delivered Duty Paid). Other international orders can continue using standard non-DDP workflows.

Pricing

Fee type	Details
Annual subscription	$1,000 AUD per year
Starshipit LCG fee	$10% of the total landed cost (includes all courier remittance fees)
Billing cadence	Consolidated nightly for that day’s LCG shipments. The total charge includes all duties, taxes, courier remittance fees, and Starshipit fees.

How it works

Starshipit Landed Costs (LCG) automatically calculates and manages all duty, tax, and fee components — from checkout through to customs payment and reconciliation. Here’s an overview of how it works:

1. Choose how to charge duties and taxes.
   • Charge landed costs at checkout — Use Starshipit checkout rates to show customers the full landed cost (shipping, duties, taxes, and fees) upfront. Customers pay this total at checkout, ensuring a seamless delivery experience with no extra charges on arrival.
   • Include duties in your product prices — coming soon. If you already build estimated duties and taxes into your product prices, Starshipit will automatically remove the duty component from your declared values when printing labels, keeping customs declarations accurate.
2. Order import and verification. Starshipit imports your orders and verifies duty, tax, and courier remittance details. The total landed cost is confirmed based on your configuration and the countries you’ve enabled for LCG.
3. Shipment creation and DDP assignment. For all orders shipping to LCG-enabled destinations, Starshipit automatically marks the shipment as Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) using the courier’s API. This ensures that you, the sender, pay all import duties and taxes, and customers won’t be charged again on delivery.
4. Courier remittance and payment. Starshipit pays all calculated duties, taxes, and courier remittance fees to the relevant customs authorities.
5. Nightly billing. Each night, Starshipit totals all landed cost components for that day’s shipments — including duties, taxes, and remittance fees — and charges your account with your existing subscription payment method - a single consolidated total.
6. Guaranteed accuracy. Starshipit guarantees the calculated amounts. If customs reassesses a shipment, Starshipit covers any variance, ensuring predictable, transparent landed costs every time.

Set up landed costs (LCG)

1. Open the LCG portal. Go to landedcosts.starshipit.com and sign in with your Starshipit account email.
2. Choose destination countries. Select the countries where you want to offer landed costs. You can update this list any time.
3. Accept terms & conditions. Review the service agreement and confirm.
4. Submit for approval. We’ll review your account and product setup. You’ll receive an email and see a dashboard notification when approved.
5. Connect checkout rates (if using checkout). Follow the prompt to open Starshipit and confirm you have checkout rates for the countries you enabled. If you already use checkout rates there’s nothing else to do.
6. Sync and validate products. Sync from Shopify or Starshipit, then add any missing HS codes and countries of origin. Return to the portal; the wizard detects updates automatically.
7. Finish. Once approved, LCG activates automatically for the selected countries. Orders to those countries will be sent DDP.

Manage your products

Use the Products tab to bring your catalogue into Landed Costs (LCG), complete any missing data, and push the validated catalogue back to Starshipit for tariff calculation and customs declarations.

1) Sync from Shopify

1. Click Sync from Shopify. In the modal, select the fields you want to import.

(Optional) Use SKU Filters to sync only certain SKUs; leave blank to sync all.

Click Start Sync. Your products and key attributes (e.g. options, IDs, and origins if present) are imported and listed in the table.

2) Review and complete required fields

• Use the HS Codes column to see which SKUs already have a code.
• If something’s missing, click the action menu and choose Get HS code suggestions:
  • Click Fetch Suggestions to see recommended codes with descriptions.
  • Select a code and use Apply as Global if it should apply to all variants of that product.
• Set or confirm the country of origin for each SKU (can be brought in from Shopify or edited here).

3) Push back to Starshipit

1. When your catalogue is complete (HS code + origin present for each SKU), click Sync to Starshipit.
2. This ensures the validated data is used for:
   • LCG duty and tax calculation
   • Accurate customs declarations on labels

4) Enable Product Catalogue at checkout

Once your products are synced in Starshipit, ensure that Product Catalogue is enabled for checkout:

1. Go to Settings > Product Catalogue > Check Use on Checkout
2. Click Save

Set up checkout rates

To display landed costs at checkout, ensure you have Starshipit checkout rates enabled for each LCG country in your ecommerce platform (e.g. Shopify). If you don’t use checkout rates, LCG still applies when orders are imported into Starshipit—charges will be collected and remitted as part of label creation and dispatch.

• Learn more about checkout rates and how to set them up.

Review rate requests

After approval, you can monitor all shipping rate lookups from your store in the Rates Requests section. This shows how LCG rates are being calculated and displayed to customers.

• Total Requests: Number of checkout rate lookups.
• Average Response Time: How quickly rates are returned.
• Error Rate: Percentage of failed rate lookups.
• Average Shipping Cost: Average total per request.
• Landed Cost Requests: Requests including duties and taxes.

Use filters to view requests by country, postal code, or request ID, and toggle Errors Only or Landed Costs Only for quick insights.

Preview checkout experience

The Checkout Rates Preview tool lets you test how landed costs will appear to customers during checkout.

1. Add a Test Product or choose one from your synced catalogue.
2. Enter sender and destination addresses.
3. Click Refresh Rates to view the simulated checkout pricing.

FAQ

Troubleshooting

Missing or duplicate products after sync

Check for duplicate SKUs in Shopify. Only one record per SKU is imported into LCG. If products are missing, ensure they have valid SKUs and re-run Sync from Shopify.

No HS code suggestions appear

Try refining the product title or description in Shopify to include clearer keywords, then re-run Fetch Suggestions in LCG.

Data didn’t update after syncing

Ensure the correct fields are ticked when syncing. Run Sync from Shopify again, then Sync to Starshipit to push updates back.

Not seeing rate data in Rates Requests

Make sure checkout rates are configured and that your store has processed orders or rate lookups since LCG was approved. Without activity, no data will appear.

Checkout preview shows no rates

LCG approval is required before rates appear in the Checkout Rates Preview tool. If still blank post-approval, check that your checkout rates are active for all LCG countries.

Approval taking longer than expected

Account approvals depend on courier verification. If it’s been more than two business days, contact support@starshipit.com for assistance.

Can’t access the LCG portal

Make sure you’re signing in with the same email linked to your Starshipit account at landedcosts.starshipit.com. If you still can’t access it, reach out to Support.