Short answer: Low-value shipments that used to enter the US duty-free now face duties, which raises landed costs on small-parcel imports and changes the math on direct-from-China fulfillment. Brands need classified SKUs, updated landed-cost models, and a fulfillment rethink.
The one-page structure
- The headline number: total tariff and duty cost for the period, as a share of COGS and as dollars per order. One line, no preamble.
- The trend: the same number for the last six periods, so the CFO sees direction, not just position.
- The variance: what changed since last month and why, in plain language. 'Section 301 increase on electronics components' beats a tariff schedule citation.
- The decisions: two or three explicit choices the numbers force, each with a costed option. Price increase, supplier move, or absorb, with the margin impact of each.
- The watchlist: rate changes already announced that will hit future periods, with effective dates.
The numbers that matter
Finance thinks in unit economics, so translate every tariff input into per-order and per-SKU dollars. The report needs total exposure, exposure by product category, and exposure by origin country. Origin-country exposure is the number that makes supplier diversification a finance conversation instead of an operations complaint.
- Duty cost per order by market: the EU number and the UK number will differ, and the CFO should see both.
- Top 10 SKUs by duty cost: a short list that focuses every pricing conversation.
- Recovered versus absorbed: how much of the duty cost made it into pricing and how much came out of margin.
- Forecast exposure: next quarter's expected cost under announced rates, so there are no surprises.
Decisions, not data
A report that ends with data gets filed. A report that ends with decisions gets a meeting. Every exposure report should close with explicit asks: approve a price change on these SKUs, approve a supplier qualification budget, or accept the margin impact in writing. CFOs respect a report that does the thinking, not just the arithmetic.
Frame each decision as a trade with a price tag. 'Move 30 percent of volume out of the affected origin: $40k in qualification costs, $180k annual duty savings' is a decision. 'Duties are rising' is a weather report.
Keeping it current without a full-time analyst
The report dies if it takes a week to build. Automate the inputs: duty costs from your product data and rate tables, order volumes from the store, announced changes from your monitoring feed. The human work is the decisions section, which is also the part the CFO actually reads. Thirty minutes of judgment on top of automated numbers beats three days of spreadsheet archaeology every time.
Refresh monthly, and refresh out of cycle when a major rate change is announced. A CFO who gets the exposure number before the invoices arrive will fund the monitoring that produced it. A CFO who learns about it from the P&L will ask why nobody was watching.
The appendix: what goes behind the one pager
The one-page report earns its credibility from the appendix nobody reads until they need it. Behind the conclusions, keep the SKU-level duty cost table, the rate-change log with effective dates, the origin-country exposure breakdown, and the reconciliation of predicted versus invoiced duty costs. When the CFO asks 'how do you know?', the answer is a page number, not a scramble.
- The SKU table: every top SKU with its current rate, origin, and monthly duty cost. This is where pricing conversations get specific.
- The change log: every rate change that affected the period, with the announcement date and the effective date. This is what turns variance explanations from stories into records.
- The forecast sheet: next quarter's exposure under announced rates, so the forward number is never a surprise.
Questions buyers ask
How often should the report be refreshed?
Monthly for the standing report, plus out-of-cycle refreshes when a major rate change is announced. A CFO who gets the exposure number before the invoices arrive will fund the monitoring; one who learns about it from the P&L will ask why nobody was watching.
What if we do not have clean SKU data yet?
Build the report top-down first: total duty spend from your broker or carrier invoices as a share of COGS, then improve the SKU-level detail over time. An approximate report this month beats a perfect report next quarter, and the top-down number usually justifies the cleanup work.
Who should own the report?
Whoever owns pricing or margin, typically finance with operations supplying the inputs. The report fails when it lives in a shared drive with no owner; it works when one person is accountable for the number and the decisions behind it.