Elements and templates are configured in System Setup; those steps live in the Implementation Manual. What follows is what the choices do — beginning with the attachment point this section exists to make unmissable.
Elements are the vocabulary of landed cost. Each element carries two decisions with long shadows. Capitalize: on, the element becomes part of stock value (and of every margin calculated from it); off, it is expensed as a period cost, and the same freight bill can honestly be treated either way — but not both, and not changed casually once receipts depend on it. Recoverable tax: a tax you will reclaim is never part of cost; marking an element recoverable keeps it out of stock value however it is charged to you.
Templates are saved grids: the rows a typical shipment from a source attracts — this freight pattern, that duty percentage, clearing per shipment. A template on its own does nothing. It takes effect in exactly two places:
- As a supplier's default. Set the template in the Landed Cost Template field on the supplier record (§4.6), and from then on, every new goods receipt from that supplier opens with its grid already filled from the template — the receiving clerk confirms figures instead of constructing them. This is where templates belong for any supplier you import from regularly.
- Applied by hand on a receipt, for the one-off shipment no default covers.
Two implications to hold onto. Changing a template changes future receipts only: a posted receipt keeps the grid it was posted with, correctable by adjustment (§4.5), never by editing the template afterwards. And a supplier whose template is set while their goods actually arrive by several different routes may need the default treated as a starting grid, reviewed per receipt — the template proposes; the receipt disposes.
The landed cost and GRNI switches themselves (0.6) decide whether any of this exists for your company. Both are safe to switch on later: receipts posted before the switch simply have no grid and no liability recorded — the disciplines apply from the day they are adopted, and your administrator adopts the opening position once, deliberately, rather than the past being rewritten underneath you.