Can I include raw material shipping costs and taxes in product pricing?
Small business owners often struggle to figure out how to properly factor shipping costs and taxes paid on raw materials into their final retail pricing. This confusion leaves them unsure how to plan and organize expenses, creating a fear of spending money on supplies only to end up with no profit.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Searching on Google for accounting and pricing rulesDid this help you?
- 2Asking questions on online communitiesDid this help you?
- 3Making a list of everything needed to buy and what each item costs, adding it up, and pricing items high enough to cover those costs and leave a profit.Did this help you?
- 4Asking friends and customers for their opinionsDid this help you?
- 5Pricing items arbitrarily between $5 and $10Did this help you?
- 6Selling items in bundles (e.g., 3-5 clips per bundle)Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Should I lower my prices? My friend told me $5 is steep for a beaded bracelet, but I've had other people tell me to charge more.”source ↗
“Hypothetically, if I were to purchase raw materials online to be shipped to my house to handcraft and sell, is it illegal to include the shipping cost/taxes I spent purchasing the raw materials, with the cost of products?”source ↗
“Every time I google this question I feel like I’m asking it the wrong question and I genuinely have no idea how else to put it into words??”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3Why do I always underestimate landscaping gravel and materials?
- 5How to predict HubSpot's new credit usage costs
- 6How much does it actually cost to move?
- 6How to calculate actual profit margins per order
- 2How to set up multiple tiered prices for a single product in HubSpot
- 6How to price products for both B2B and D2C channels