When a dealer ships you a package, the shipping, insurance, and handling charges are part of what you paid for the bullion.
The Record Purchase form has a single field to capture all of that at the transaction level, and the app then spreads it across the individual line items so each piece in your inventory carries its fair share of the cost.
This article covers what goes in the field, how the allocation works, and the handful of situations where you might leave it at $0.
For the full Record Purchase walkthrough, see How to record a purchase.
Where the field lives
The Shipping & Handling field sits in the Transaction Details section at the top of the Record Purchase form, in the right-hand column alongside Notes.
The helper text underneath reads "Optional — allocated to cost basis proportionally," which is the rule in one line.
The field accepts a single USD amount. Enter the total for the whole transaction, not a per-line figure.
What counts as shipping
Anything the dealer charged you on top of the metal itself that's tied to delivery of the order:
Standard shipping or postage at whatever rate the dealer used.
Insurance fees for the shipment, whether mandatory or opt-in.
Handling or packaging surcharges some dealers itemize separately.
Signature confirmation, expedited shipping, or overnight upgrades.
Add it all up and enter the single total. The form doesn't ask you to break it out by category. It just needs the bottom-line non-metal cost of getting the order to your door.
What this field is not for is the per-unit dealer premium (that goes in Premium / Unit on each line — see Entering the premium you paid), and it's not for sales tax (see the sales tax note below).
How shipping is allocated across line items
When you submit the transaction, the app distributes the shipping total across every line item in the transaction in proportion to each line's pre-shipping cost. The formula:
shippingForLine = totalShipping × (lineCost / sumOfAllLineCosts)
Where lineCost is the line's pre-shipping total (pricePerUnit × quantity), and sumOfAllLineCosts is the sum of those line totals across the whole transaction.
The shipping share for each line is then divided by the line's quantity and added to each inventory item's cost basis. So a 5-coin line that gets allocated $15 of shipping has $3 added to each coin's cost basis.
A few practical notes about the allocation:
It's proportional to value, not to count. A single $2,000 gold coin gets a bigger slice of shipping than ten $30 silver coins on the same order, because dollar value drives the split.
Cost basis only, not premium. Allocated shipping bumps the cost-basis figure on each inventory item; it doesn't change the recorded premium per unit, which stays as you entered it.
Allocation is one-shot at submit time. Once the transaction is saved, the per-item shipping is baked into each item's cost basis. Edits to shipping after submission recompute the allocation across the lines.
A worked example
You place a single APMEX order with three lines and $25 of shipping & insurance.
Line | Product | Qty | Price/unit | Line cost |
1 | 1 oz Gold Eagle | 1 | $2,510 | $2,510 |
2 | 10 oz Silver Bar | 2 | $310 | $620 |
3 | 1 oz Silver Round | 10 | $32 | $320 |
Total |
|
|
| $3,450 |
Allocate $25 of shipping in proportion to each line's cost:
Line | Share of total | Shipping allocated | Per-item shipping |
1 (1 Gold Eagle) | $2,510 / $3,450 = 72.75% | $18.19 | $18.19 |
2 (2 Silver Bars) | $620 / $3,450 = 17.97% | $4.49 | $2.25 |
3 (10 Silver Rounds) | $320 / $3,450 = 9.28% | $2.32 | $0.23 |
Total | 100% | $25.00 |
|
In the resulting inventory:
The single Gold Eagle carries $18.19 of allocated shipping on top of its $2,510 line cost — its cost basis becomes $2,528.19.
Each Silver Bar carries $2.25 of allocated shipping on top of its $310 line cost — each one's cost basis becomes $312.25.
Each Silver Round carries $0.23 of allocated shipping on top of its $32 line cost — each one's cost basis becomes $32.23.
The total allocated shipping across the inventory items adds up exactly to the $25 you entered (give or take a cent of rounding on the display).
When to leave it at $0
The field is optional. Leave it at $0.00 in any of these situations:
You bought in person. Local coin shop, coin show, peer-to-peer trade — no shipping charged, leave it zero.
Shipping was already rolled into the per-unit price. Some dealers quote shipped-to-your-door prices with no separate line item; in that case the shipping is already baked into the per-unit price you entered, and you'd be double-counting if you also put it in the shipping field.
The shipping was free. Many dealers offer free shipping above an order threshold. If the invoice shows shipping as $0, the field should show $0.
If you're not sure whether shipping is included in your per-unit price, check the dealer's invoice for a separate shipping line. If it's there as a separate charge, use this field. If it's not itemized, assume it's baked in and leave this field empty.
A note on sales tax
Sales tax is not shipping, and there isn't currently a dedicated field for it on the Record Purchase form. How you handle sales tax depends on how you think about it for your own records:
If you treat sales tax as part of your cost basis, the cleanest workaround is to fold it into the Premium / Unit for each line. The math: add (taxOnLine / quantityOnLine) to whatever premium you'd otherwise enter. Your cost basis reflects the all-in price you paid, and the recorded "premium" is slightly inflated by the tax — which is a fair representation since the tax was something you actually paid above metal value.
If you'd rather track sales tax separately for tax-deductibility reasons, leave it off the form entirely and keep it in your own records. The trade-off is that your in-app cost basis will undercount your actual outlay by the sales-tax amount.
A dedicated sales-tax field is on the wish list, but isn't on the form today. If this is a recurring annoyance for you, the support channel takes feedback.
How shipping shows up later
Once the transaction is saved, allocated shipping is preserved in two places:
Per-item cost basis on every inventory item the line created. This is the figure used for gain/loss calculations when you sell, and for the cost-basis column on the Annual Report.
The transaction-level shipping total on the Transactions History page. Click into the expanded view of the transaction and you'll see the original shipping amount you entered.
If you export your transactions or holdings to CSV, the allocated shipping is included in the cost basis column on each item; the original transaction-level shipping total is included as a column on transaction exports.
Where to go next
How to record a purchase: The full Record Purchase form walkthrough.
Entering the premium you paid: Premium-per-unit vs. shipping — two different fields, two different jobs.
Buying multiple products in one transaction: Multi-line transactions and how they interact with shipping.
Editing a transaction after the fact: How changes to shipping recompute allocated cost basis.