Odoo Landed Costs and Deferred GST: The Setup Guide for Australian Importers and Exporters

Bringing goods in from overseas, or selling them out, adds a layer to every part of your accounting. Purchase orders land in foreign currencies, freight and customs charges arrive weeks after the stock does, GST behaves differently at the border than it does at the till, and the BAS has to reconcile all of it. Plenty of Australian importers run this on spreadsheets sitting beside their accounting file, which is exactly the kind of disconnection 45% of Australian decision-makers say limits their growth.

Odoo handles the full loop in one system: the purchase in the supplier’s currency, the landed costs that build your true product cost, the GST treatment on both sides of the border, and the BAS that reports it. Here is how the pieces fit for Australian importers and exporters, and the settings that decide whether the numbers can be trusted.

What importing looks like inside Odoo

An import starts as a normal purchase order, raised in the supplier’s currency. Odoo’s purchasing module handles the RFQ, the confirmation and the receipt when the container finally arrives. Because the order sits in USD, EUR or RMB, multi-currency accounting does the conversion work: exchange rates update automatically, and the difference between the rate on invoice day and the rate on payment day posts as a currency gain or loss without manual journals.

The part spreadsheets get wrong is what happens between those steps. Stock that has left the supplier but not cleared customs, deposits paid months ahead, and freight invoices from a different vendor than the goods all need a home in the ledger. Odoo gives each one a place, which is what keeps your stock valuation and your BAS from drifting apart.

How Odoo landed costs work for Australian importers

The invoice price of imported stock is rarely its real cost. Sea freight, customs duty, insurance, port and handling charges all arrive on top, and if they are expensed straight to the profit and loss, your margins by product are fiction. Odoo’s landed costs feature takes those extra invoices and allocates them across the products on a receipt, by value, quantity, weight or volume, so inventory valuation reflects what the stock cost to get onto the shelf.

Two conditions matter for Australian businesses. First, landed costs only apply under FIFO or average costing with automated inventory valuation turned on, so the costing method decision comes before anything else. Second, GST does not belong in landed costs. If you are registered and can claim the import GST back as a credit, it is not a cost of the goods, and building it into valuation overstates your stock. Duty and freight go in; claimable GST stays out.

Deferred GST: the cash flow change most importers miss

By default, GST on taxable imports is payable at the border before goods are released, calculated on the customs value plus duty, transport and insurance. For a business bringing in a few containers a month, that is real money leaving the account weeks before the stock earns anything.

The ATO’s deferred GST scheme moves that payment off the wharf and onto your BAS. Approved importers pay nothing at the border. The deferred amount appears on the monthly BAS at label 7A and is claimed back as a credit at label 1B on the same form, so for most fully creditable imports the two cancel out and the GST becomes a reporting line instead of a cash payment. The conditions: you must lodge your BAS monthly rather than quarterly, and lodge and pay electronically, which is the main adjustment for businesses used to quarterly cycles.

“Deferred GST is the first thing we check when an importer moves onto Odoo. Most are eligible, half have never heard of it, and the switch to a monthly BAS pays for itself in cash flow before the implementation is finished.” Josh Craig, Director, Auboros

Inside Odoo, the setup is a monthly tax period plus correct tax mapping for import GST. The ATO adds your deferred total to the BAS it issues, so your job in the system is to record the credit side against the right tax grid, and Odoo’s Australian localisation builds the BAS from those grids. Mapped once, reported every month.

Exports: GST-free, but only inside the 60 day window

Sales of goods shipped overseas are GST-free under ATO rules, provided the goods leave Australia within 60 days of the earlier of payment or invoice. Miss the window without an approved extension and the ATO can treat the sale as taxable. You also need documentary evidence that the goods left the country; without it, GST-free treatment is not safe even if the container sailed.

In Odoo that means two things. Export invoices get coded with a GST-free tax rather than the standard 10 per cent, so they report correctly as GST-free sales on the BAS. And because export customers usually pay in their own currency, the invoice, the payment and any gain or loss run through the same multi-currency engine as your imports. Attach the bill of lading or export declaration to the invoice record and the evidence lives where an auditor will look for it.

The setup that decides whether the numbers hold

Most import and export problems we see are configuration, not software. The common ones: landed costs enabled while products still run standard costing, so allocations never reach valuation. Import GST paid through the customs broker and then keyed again from a supplier bill, doubling the credit. Export invoices left on the default 10 per cent tax. And exchange rates updating daily while bank feeds post at the bank’s actual rate, leaving small differences nobody reconciles. Fewer than 1 in 3 Australian businesses adopt new software successfully, and trade-heavy setups fail on exactly these details.

None of this is hard to get right at implementation time. It is expensive to fix two BAS cycles later. If your business imports, exports or both, our Odoo services cover the trade configuration end to end: costing method, deferred GST mapping, export tax codes and the multi-currency setup underneath them.

Importing or exporting on Odoo? Get the GST and costing setup right first.

Auboros is a Brisbane based Odoo Silver Partner working with importers and distributors across Queensland and Australia. If you want landed costs, deferred GST and the BAS to reconcile without side spreadsheets, book a free consultation. A short conversation before you configure is cheaper than a correction after you lodge.