How do you track tariff and duty costs by product?

By recording every duty layer on every customs entry line, with its tariff code, country of origin and entry date, and allocating it into each product's landed cost. Because the entry summary often arrives weeks after the goods, accrue an expected duty per line at receipt and true it up when the summary comes. Wood products now carry several layers that depend on code, origin and date, and those layers keep changing. Since February 2026, one of them has even been refunded. A duty total per shipment can't be split back into products, or into a refund claim, once the layers differ.

What the usual answer says

The top results are calculators. Enter a tariff code, origin, entry date and value, and they show each tariff and fee on its own row. That is a good way to estimate duty before buying. It doesn't record what was actually paid, line by line, or carry it into product margin.

How the layers have moved

The customs agency's guidance of 10 October 2025 on the timber and lumber tariff set duties "ranging between 10 percent and 25 percent". They applied to goods entered on or after 14 October 2025. Softwood lumber under 15 listed codes took "10 percent additional ad valorem rate of duty". Upholstered wooden furniture and kitchen cabinets and vanities took 25 percent, with lower rates of 10 or 15 percent for some origins. The same code carried different rates depending on where the goods came from.

A proclamation of 31 December 2025 then pushed back the scheduled increases to "January 1, 2027". On that date the furniture rate rises to 30 percent and the cabinet and vanity rate to 50 percent, double today's, in just over three months.

The October guidance also said that, where the timber tariff applied, other listed tariffs "do not apply to such imported product". Those were tariffs under an emergency-powers statute. A law firm's alert reports that on 20 February 2026 the highest court held that the statute "does not authorize the president to impose tariffs", and such tariffs "are, in principle, subject to reimbursement". The alert's advice to importers was practical. Keep "entry summaries, duty payment records and internal allocation of tariff costs" for every affected entry. The customs agency's refund page says a refund declaration "consists of the list of entries for which refunds of IEEPA duties are being requested", with up to 9,999 entries each.

The newest layer came in August. BNN Bloomberg reported in July 2026 a 50 per cent tariff under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, effective 19 August. It added "98 tariff line items" for forestry, mainly plywood, fibreboard, particleboard and veneered panels from one major supplying country.

Why product cost depends on it

Inventory cost, under IAS 2, "includes all costs of purchase, costs of conversion" and other costs "incurred in bringing the inventories to their present location and condition". Import duty is a cost of purchase on our reading, and national accounting rules, which most affected importers report under, treat it the same way. A product's margin is only right if its share of each duty layer is right.

Accrue, then true up

Most importers already receive line-level data: the broker's entry summary lists each line's code, value and duties. The problem is timing. The summary and the broker invoice arrive after the goods, and are often posted to one duty expense account. Cost of goods is understated when margins are first reviewed, then corrected in bulk.

So hold the tariff classification on each item and the origin on each supplier-item pair, with the evidence. At receipt, compute an expected duty per line from code, origin and entry date, and post it to the product's cost. When the entry summary arrives, match it line by line and layer by layer, and post the difference. Where duty is ad valorem, allocate each line's duty across products by value. When a rate changes, as it will for cabinets on 1 January 2027, the expected rates change from that entry date on. And when a layer is refunded, the entry-line records are the refund claim.

Trade remedy deposits belong in the same records but separately, as deposits against a final liability that can be adjusted years later.

Where AI helps

AI can read entry summaries and broker invoices into line-level records and match each line to purchase orders and items. It can flag lines where the applied rate differs from the expected rate for that code, origin and date, and list which products an announced change will touch.

When it doesn't apply

Businesses that buy only from domestic suppliers pay no import duty directly. For a distributor whose entries each carry one code from one origin, allocating by shipment loses little. Line-level allocation becomes worth it once a single entry mixes codes, origins or layers.

Quarri for wood products is built around how a wood products plant runs, where the order book meets real capacity.

Quarri is an AI-native data platform for the timber supply chain. It connects buying, production, sales and inventory for forest management, sawmill, wood products and pulp, paper and packaging operators.