Here's a paste of the information I got from Christina at Microsoft regarding my Landed Cost questions. I think you'll find information about what LC does and how to set it up.
-Beth
Hi Beth--
Landed cost may help you on the purchasing side, but it would not pass directly through to sales order. What landed cost does is include an additional cost in the item itself (so it gets posted to the inventory layer with a greater cost, that includes the landed portion). So it rolls the landed cost in to the inventory cost. It will not work with drop ship items. However (and I did not test it all the way out) it does look like you could use it with non inventory items.
Landed cost is set up in three parts...Cards>>Inventory>>Landed Cost, set up the individual costs you want to attribute (mark match to invoice if you want to match the cost to the actual freight invoice or whatever). Cards>>Inventory>>Landed Cost Groups, to establish common groups of landed costs that are applied to purchase orders. Cards>>Inventory>>Quantities/Sites to specify a specific landed cost group for a certain item/site combination.
Then when you enter a purchase order, you can click on the line item and use the item number expansion to view the detail, and there will be a landed cost group id (defaulted from quantities/sites) and you can change it if desired (or manually enter the landed cost group if there was no default).
Then when you receive, you can also see/change the landed cost group ID by using the expansion arrow next to the Item Number field again. Or to see the individual landed costs calculated on the line (and modify the individual landed costs, even adding others) you can use the expansion next to unit cost. You can also use the landed costs button at the bottom of the receivings window to apportion landed cost across the entire document (for example, take one landed cost for a total amount and apportion it to the line items based on weight, quantity, extended cost, etc).
If you have chose to match to invoice for the landed cost, you can then later enter an invoice from the freight company using Transactions>>Purchasing>>Enter/Match Invoice (even though you have no PO from the freight company) and on the line item mark the LC checkbox (which means match to landed cost). The system will then display any prior received landed costs that can be matched to for that vendor.
I know this is a bit much to absorb, so post back if you need more explanation. I find that the help screens in GP itself are more helpful than the manual in understanding it.
Take care,
Christina