COMMERCIAL INVOICERegardless on country of origin and a carrier used for your shipment you always will be asked to provide some sort of Commercial Invoice before your goods be accepted to the international shipment. Commercial Invoices, besides other points, are used by origin and destination Customs in purpose to control legality of commodity and assign duty, taxes etc (if any) at the origin and destination. It may be an original commercial invoice obtained from your merchant or proforma commercial invoice in which shippers describe commodity and assign value of goods to be shipped by themselves. In certain cases, particularly for personal shipments from the USA, a Valued Packing List may be sufficient as well, because its form actually reflects information provided in a proforma commercial invoice. However, when your goods will reach the destination, Customs in certain countries may request to transfer a valued packing list initially submitted at origin into a form of commercial invoice anyway. Very important to understand that a commercial invoice submitted at origin in a form sufficient to the origin Customs may not always be sufficient for the Customs at the destination. But do not worry about that. Upon the destination Customs request, having a copy of your originally submitted commercial invoice, you or your Customs Broker will always have a chance to transform the document into the format required by the destination Customs. Our suggestions on filing Commercial Invoices at origin: - If it is a commercial shipment then request your invoice from the seller in a form acceptable to export. Then submit a copy of this original invoice to your shipment.
- If it is not possible to obtain an invoice in a form of commercial invoice acceptable by Customs at origin, then ask your freight forwarder or carrier’s agent for a standard form of the document used by Customs in your country.
- If it is a personal shipment, always file your Valued Packing List or Proforma Commercial Invoice in the standard form acceptable by Customs in your country.
General requirements on format of Commercial Invoices for goods being IMPORTING to the USA Commercial Invoices must be in English and provide the following information (See the Section 141.86 of U.S. customs regulations for more detailed requirements): - The port of entry to which the goods are designated;
- Shippers (sellers) and Buyers full name, address and contact information;
- Detailed description of goods being imported;
- The quantities in weight and measures;
- Value of each item in USD based on exchange rate on the date of export;
- The country of origin of the goods; and
- All goods or services furnished for the production of goods being imported not included in the invoice price (if any)
The Online Form for filling out a Proforma Commercial Invoice for goods being EXPORTED from the USA Commercial shippers: Request your invoice from the seller in a form acceptable by U.S. Customs to the export. Then fax or e-mail a copy of this original invoice to us. Otherwise, our clients are able to fill out and submit a Proforma Commercial Invoice online via link in our shipping instructions using a standard form acceptable by U.S. Customs. We will e-mail to you this link upon your booking request. You may try fully working simplified version of the document from this link Notice: Each Commercial Invoice in our shipping instructions is unique. It is generated individually on your shipment and pre-formatted based on the information that you had provide when booked your shipment online. IMPORTANT: While submitting your documents online double-check all info in the document. If you see errors or typos, then re-submit the document or ask us via e-mail to correct it. During submitting your ship documents online you have several opportunities to edit and re-submit the documents. However, as soon as documents are submitted to the carrier, all further correction will be possible only at a time when you recover your cargo at the destination. |