Harvest - Surcharge Management for Food

Overview

Use Harvest - Surcharge Management for Food to automatically calculate rule-based surcharges on sales orders and sales invoices in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Surcharges can be used for recurring charges such as freight, customs, handling, fuel, environmental fees, cold chain fees, or other charges that need to be applied consistently based on configured business rules.

This article explains how to calculate, review, exclude, and understand surcharge lines on sales documents. It is intended for sales, customer service, finance, and operations users who process sales orders or sales invoices.

Before you start

Before using this feature, make sure:

1. You have access to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central sales orders and/or sales invoices.
   
2. You have standard Business Central sales document permissions and the required Surcharge Management permission, typically HFSSCG - Read for sales order processing.
   
3. Active surcharge rules have already been configured by an administrator or consultant.
   
4. The customer, ship-to, location, shipment method, shipping agent, items, and currency are complete on the sales document when they are used by surcharge rules.
   
5. Items have the required master data for the surcharge calculation, such as gross weight for weight-based surcharges.
   
6. The required G/L accounts or item charges have been created for surcharge posting.
   

How to use Harvest - Surcharge Management for Food

Follow these steps when you are working with a sales order or sales invoice that may require surcharges.

1. Create or open the sales document. Open a sales order or sales invoice and enter the customer as usual. Confirm the ship-to, location, shipment method, and shipping agent if these fields are used by your company to determine surcharge eligibility.

2. Add or update sales lines. Enter the item lines, quantities, units of measure, and other required details. Surcharges may be based on the whole document or on specific qualifying item lines.

3. Calculate surcharges. Depending on your company setup, surcharges may calculate when the sales document is released, when you manually choose Calculate Surcharge from the document actions, or during posting when active surcharge rules exist.

4. Review surcharge lines. Review the surcharge lines inserted on the document. A surcharge may appear as a G/L account line or an item charge line. The description, quantity, unit price, and line amount show how the charge was applied.

5. Confirm whether the surcharge is shown separately or included in the unit price. Some item-level surcharges may be configured to display as separate lines. Others may be included in the item unit price so the customer-facing document shows a combined price.

6. Recalculate after changes. If you change the customer, ship-to, shipment details, items, quantities, or other information that affects surcharges, recalculate the surcharge or release the document again according to your company process.

7. Post the document. Post the shipment and invoice as usual. Posted documents will include the surcharge treatment that applied at posting. Corrections and credit processes follow standard Business Central reversal behavior.

What happens next?

1. Business Central evaluates active surcharge rules against the sales document.
   
2. Only rules that match the document date, currency, customer, ship-to, location, shipment method, shipping agent, and item criteria are eligible to calculate.
3. If multiple filters of the same type are configured, a match to any one of those filters can qualify the surcharge. If multiple filter types are configured, the document must meet each applicable filter type.
   
4. When a surcharge applies, the system creates or updates surcharge lines on the sales document. Item-level surcharges can be linked back to the related source item line for reporting and auditability. 
5. G/L account surcharges post to the selected account. Item charge surcharges follow standard Business Central item charge assignment and allocation rules.
6. For partial shipments or invoices, the surcharge frequency controls whether the surcharge applies on each invoice or only once for the document.
7. If a posted invoice is corrected or reversed, the surcharge entries are reversed through the standard Business Central correction process.
   

Things to know

1. Only active surcharges calculate. A surcharge must be active and within its starting and ending date range to apply.
2. Calculation on release depends on setup. If Calculate Surcharge On Release is enabled, surcharge lines are recalculated when the order or invoice is released. If it is not enabled, users can calculate manually and active surcharges can still calculate during posting.
3. Document-level and item-level surcharges behave differently. Document-level surcharges apply to the whole document. Item-level surcharges apply to qualifying item lines and may create separate surcharge lines for each applicable source line.
4. Calculation methods affect the amount. Flat rate surcharges use the configured amount. Percentage surcharges calculate from the sales amount. Weight-based surcharges require item weight data.
5. Percent values are entered as whole percentages. For example, enter 5 for 5%, not 0.05.
   
6. Item charges may need allocation. When a surcharge posts as an item charge, Business Central uses the configured allocation method, such as equally, by amount, by weight, or by volume.
   
7. Exclusions may be available. A document-level exclusion can remove all surcharges. A line-level exclusion can prevent item-level surcharges from applying to that line.
8. Surcharge lines should usually not be edited manually. If an amount looks wrong, confirm the source data and recalculate, or contact the person responsible for surcharge setup.
   

Troubleshooting

Need more help?

Contact your Business Central administrator, internal help desk, customer success manager, or Harvest support team for help with setup, permissions, or errors.