Which freight fields belong beside a supplier's unit price?

A unit price may be identical across offers while one seller quotes a distant handoff and another includes more transport. Readers need a map of the price boundary.

What the primary source can establish

The ICC Incoterms® 2020 Digital Library is the first-party reference for this guide. ICC lists the Incoterms® 2020 rules and separates rules for any transport mode from rules for sea and inland waterway transport. It does not investigate or endorse any named supplier on Source Ledger. The steps below are our editorial method for making a buyer-facing field more precise.

A field-level check

Create separate fields for goods price, packing, origin handling, main carriage, insurance, destination handling, duties and final delivery. Mark which party supplied each number and whether it is an estimate or contractual commitment.

Write down the exact field, the party that supplied the information, the original document or page, the date seen and the scope of the check. If a reviewer took an action, record that action rather than a general “verified” label. Reopen the source when the transaction or underlying document changes.

Where the inference stops

Do not total missing values as zero. A blank freight line means unknown, not free. Transport terms and tariff treatment may vary by transaction and jurisdiction.

A missing answer is a question to resolve, not permission to substitute a guess. Separate a statement by the supplier from a public record and from a documented human review. No source in this article proves a quality ranking or an existing buyer relationship.

What to record before deciding

Publish the cost components that are actually sourced and leave a clear “not quoted” marker for missing components. Let buyers model total cost with their own logistics advice.

This entry describes how to evaluate evidence. It is not a dossier for a real company, an approval decision or a substitute for transaction-specific professional review.

Common question

Can the cheapest ex-works unit price be called the cheapest supply?

Not without adding the relevant transport, risk and transaction costs on a comparable basis.

Related guide

Continue with How to keep an expired supplier quote out of a directory comparison for another field-level check.