Displaying shipping costs and MSRP discounts to clients

Shipping costs aren't what they used to be. Between tariffs, longer lead times, and freight charges that can land in your inbox months after an item ships, "what does shipping actually cost?" has become one of the trickiest questions to answer for your clients in real time.

Materio allows you to:

Shipping & MSRP Visibility gives you the controls to do all of the above — at the company level, the project level, and even down to the individual item. Here's how it works.

Your global settings are the starting point. Anything you set here becomes the default for new projects going forward. (Existing projects aren't affected — you'll adjust those directly in the project. More below.)

To get there:

You'll see three controls and a live client preview on the right so you can see what your clients will see as you make changes.

Choose how shipping appears to your client:

When you're showing shipping separately, you can tag every shipping amount with a disclaimer that tells your client where that number stands. This is just a default - you can always override this on individual products in your project.

Whatever you select here becomes the default tag applied to shipping on new products you add to projects.

Turn this on if you want a "% off MSRP" badge to appear on items where your price beats MSRP. It's a visual cue that helps clients feel the value of the trade discount you're passing on.

A few notes on how this works:

When you save, your settings apply to all new projects you create going forward. Existing projects keep their current settings — you'll update those directly in each project.

Already have a project in flight? You can apply these settings to it directly.

You'll see the same three controls as your global settings.

One important behavior to know: The Shipping display toggle (separate vs. bundled) takes effect immediately on everything currently in the project — past, present, and future. Flip it once and the entire live scope of work updates.

The Shipping disclaimer and MSRP badge settings, on the other hand, only affect new products added after you change the setting. They don't retroactively change tags on items already in the project. (This is on purpose — if you've already marked an item as Final, you don't want a default change to flip it back to Estimated.)

✅Tip: Set your settings at the start of the project and leave them. It keeps things simple and consistent.

Sometimes a project-level default isn't quite right. A mirror you're checking out today is Final. A custom sofa you ordered last month is still Estimated until the freight invoice comes in. You can handle these item by item from several places.

The shipping disclaimer can be edited from:

The MSRP badge can be toggled on or off in the product editor, on the individual product. (It will only show as toggleable on products where your price beats MSRP.)

Note: The Shipping Disclaimer column in the scope table only appears when shipping is being displayed separately. If your project has shipping bundled into the item price, there's no disclaimer to show.

Perhaps your workflow best serves updating shipping disclaimers once a PO has been processed and the actual shipping cost is known.

This happens with the client pricing tool. When you push an updated shipping cost from a PO back to the project, you can also update the disclaimer on that same screen — typically moving the item from Estimated or TBD to Final at the moment the cost is confirmed.

This way, your scope of work and any future client-facing documents reflect what's actually been ordered and paid for, while items still in the pipeline stay marked as Estimated or TBD.

That said, you don't have to move items to Final at all. Many firms keep the Estimated tag in place for the duration of the project — it gives you cover if a freight invoice comes in higher than expected, and saves the admin work of updating each item.

When shipping is displayed separately, you'll see a Shipping total line at the bottom of your scope of work and on client documents. The disclaimer that appears on the subtotal is determined conservatively: the least-certain item wins.

That means:

This is intentional — we want clients to always be aware of the uncertainty in the total they're looking at, rather than seeing a confident "Final" subtotal that's masking a still-pending shipping cost on a single item.

There's one important nuance: financial documents are snapshotted at the time you publish them to the client. If you publish an invoice, then later change your project's shipping display setting, the published invoice will stay as it was. Your live scope of work will update, but the snapshot won't.

If you need to update a published document, revert it to a draft, change your settings, and republish it.

On deposit invoices and final invoices only, you have an additional toggle: Show itemized shipping costs. This puts a per-item shipping breakdown on the invoice in addition to the shipping subtotal at the bottom.

Some firms like the full transparency. Others prefer to show only the rolled-up shipping subtotal so individual items don't get scrutinized. Your call — toggle to whichever your client prefers.

As part of this work, product option cards have been redesigned. The new layout cleanly breaks out shipping from material cost so you can see exactly how a price is built. Click into the price to see the formula behind it.

You'll also notice a new Preview as Client button on option cards. Use it to see exactly what your client will see on that option — without their edit controls, internal notes, or anything else they shouldn't have access to.

If you're pulling data out of Materio:

Will changing my global settings update my existing projects? No. Global settings apply only to projects created after you save the change. To update an existing project, open it and use the gear icon at the top of the Scope of Work.

If I toggle "Display shipping separately" on an existing project, will that change items already in the scope? Yes — the Shipping display toggle is the one setting that applies retroactively to everything in the project. Your existing items will immediately show shipping broken out. (The Shipping disclaimer and MSRP badge settings, by contrast, only apply to new items added after the change and do not have a retroactive effect.)

Can different items in the same project have different disclaimers? Yes. Set the project-level default in Pricing Display, then override individual items from the scope table, the product editor, or the client pricing tool.

Where do I see the Shipping Disclaimer column in the scope table? It only appears when shipping is being displayed separately on the project. If your project has shipping bundled into item price, there's no disclaimer to display.

Why isn't the MSRP badge showing on my item? The badge only appears when your price actually beats MSRP after your markup is applied. If your price is at or above MSRP, no badge is shown.

Will the disclaimer change be tracked in item history? Not at the moment. Disclaimer changes aren't logged in the activity feed today — though it's on our radar for the future.

Can I enter shipping as a percentage of item cost instead of a dollar amount? Not yet. Shipping today is entered as a dollar amount. We've heard this request and it's on on our radar.

If you have questions or run into anything that doesn't work the way you expect, reach out to us at support@materio.co — we'd love to hear how you're using it.