Software for manufacturers and importers

You buy direct from overseas factories. You write POs in dollars, pay deposits in dollars, get billed for freight in dollars, and need a true landed cost per SKU the day the container clears customs.

You're probably dealing with…

• A factory PO with 30% deposit on order, 70% balance against the bill of lading — and your inventory system thinks the PO is a single number with a single status.
• A twelve-to-sixteen-week production lead time, then four weeks on the ocean, then a week in customs, then drayage to the warehouse — and at every step you're trying to remember "what was the original ETA again?"
• A freight forwarder invoice that arrives a month after the container — ocean freight, port fees, drayage, fuel surcharge, brokerage — and you have to manually allocate it across forty different SKUs by weight and volume.
• A customs duty bill that lands separately, and you're not sure whether to expense it or roll it into cost of goods.
• A "true cost per unit" that's only knowable a quarter after the container landed, because that's how long it takes to chase down every line item.
• Three different platforms doing three pieces of this: a tool for POs, a spreadsheet for landed cost math, an accounting system that doesn't talk to either.
• The slow, demoralizing realization that you've been pricing units off a guessed cost for months.

Here's what changes with Rilk

Rilk's manufacturer and import workflow was built for exactly this operation. A PO is a real object with structured payment terms — deposit percentage, balance percentage, currency, payment due triggers (on order, against the bill of lading, on receipt). The PO has a lifecycle that mirrors your real operation: issued, in production, shipped, at port, customs cleared, received. Not a status flag — a tracked, time-stamped progression with photos and documents attached where they belong.

When the freight forwarder invoice lands, you enter it once and allocate by weight, volume, value, or unit count across every SKU on the shipment. Customs duty, brokerage, drayage, fuel surcharge — every landed cost line item flows into the per-unit cost. The first unit out of the container has a true landed cost on it the day it gets to the warehouse, not three months later.

Purchase orders carries the rest of the operation. Lead times tracked per supplier, per SKU. Outstanding deposits and balances visible at a glance. Forecasted ETA against the actual production calendar your factory shares with you.

When the container's contents finally sell, per-unit profit reporting reflects the real cost — not a guessed average, not a quarter-old number. Margin per SKU, per shipment, per supplier. If a particular factory's units consistently land at a higher real cost than you priced for, the report tells you. If a particular freight forwarder is quietly eating margin in surcharges, the report tells you that too.

And because Rilk runs your sell-through as well — multi-channel sync for Amazon, Walmart, eBay, BackMarket, and Shopify — the PO writing decision is grounded in real channel-level velocity. You know, for the next factory order, how many units you'll sell over the lead time, broken out by channel. Inventory planning stops being a Friday-afternoon guess.

Capabilities that matter most for you

• Manufacturer & import flow — Deposit/balance payment terms, production milestones, container tracking, document attachments. Built for direct-from-factory buying.
• Purchase orders — Landed cost allocation across SKUs by weight, volume, value, or unit count. Freight, duty, brokerage, fuel — every line on the bill flows through.
• Reporting — True per-unit margin against the real landed cost. Per-shipment, per-supplier, per-SKU.
• Multi-channel sync — Sell-through velocity by channel for your import planning.
• Returns — When defective units come back, the cost basis traveled with them. You know the real cost of the return.

A day at manufacturer / importer with Rilk

• 8:30 a.m. — Write the next PO with the factory. Set 30/70 deposit/balance terms, target production start, expected ETA. Wire the 30%.
• 10:00 a.m. — Production update from the factory — 60% complete, on-track. Note it on the PO with photo attachments from the QC team.
• 12:00 p.m. — A different container hits the port. Status flips to "at port." Freight forwarder uploads the discharge documents.
• 1:30 p.m. — Customs clearance comes through. Duty bill arrives by email. Enter the duty line on the shipment cost allocation.
• 2:30 p.m. — Drayage to warehouse. Container arrives, unload begins. Every SKU lands in inventory with its real landed cost: factory cost + ocean freight + duty + drayage + brokerage, allocated.
• 3:30 p.m. — Sales planning view: this shipment has 4,200 units of hero SKU. Channel velocity says you'll sell that in fourteen weeks. Next factory order should go out in nine.
• 4:30 p.m. — Write the next PO. Deposit terms, target ETA. Wire the 30%. The cycle restarts, but this time on real numbers.

Customer quote (placeholder)

"We import containers from two factories overseas and our 'true cost per unit' used to be a number we'd reconstruct a quarter late, by hand, in a spreadsheet. Now we have it the day the container clears customs. We've already caught two pricing mistakes that would have cost us six figures."

— Operations director, consumer goods importer

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Most platforms can't do landed cost properly. The vs. Finale Inventory and vs. SellerCloud comparisons walk through where they fall short. Adjacent playbooks: multi-channel brand and e-commerce seller.