Commercial Invoice Requirements

Due to strong enforcement of export regulations in the US and of import regulations in many countries, it has become increasingly difficult to ship international shipments.

In order for the paper work to be in compliance with regulations, you may need to redesign your commercial invoice. Review the information below carefully, as well as review the enclosed spreadsheet.

Our carriers and freight forwarders have made us aware of the following regulations:

1) Declared value must be sales price, except if the item is for marketing purposes and never will be resold, in which case production price can be declared of if the item is shipped inter-company, in which case production price can be declared or if it is software, in which case production price and intellectual value can be declared separately. However, the sales value still must be on the commercial invoice.

Several countries, including Canada, have decided to focus their investigation on declared value in order to collect old custom dues and fine the importer if the declared value was too low.

We automatically label your shipment to be for sale to the recipient. If you need us to ship inter-company or for marketing purposes occasionally, you will need to make changes to your order header file for electronic data transfer. Please contact your account manager for details.

2) SED (Shipper's Export Declaration) is required except if all of the following criteria are met:

NLR (no license required)

Shipments declared value less than $2,500 for any schedule B number shipped in same shipment

Shipment is not to a restricted country (such as Cuba, Libya, North Korea)

Please note that shipments to Canada normally do not require SED, but shipments to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the former Pacific Trust Territories require SED if the value exceeds $2,500.

Most fulfillment houses do not provide customer SED's. Instead, you are required to provide SED's if needed. The SED's can be provided as a .pdf file or as a faxed hard copy. They must be signed by a properly authorized person within your company. We will fill in the weight upon shipment if needed.

Unless otherwise notified in writing by you, we assume that none of your products require an export license. We will this declare them as NLR (no license required).

3) It facilitates customs clearance to include Schedule B codes, and it prevents errors. This also is required for SED's. To avoid declaring the wrong schedule B code, we require you to review the schedule B codes assigned to your products. We suggest you determine your schedule B number on the US Government's Website:
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/schedules/b/index.html.

As a service, we tentatively assigned production value as well as Schedule B numbers on the enclosed product listing (only for products which are likely to be exported). Please review it and make any changes.

Of course, we are shipping on your export license and at your risk. The purpose of this e-mail is exclusively to alert you to the existence of the rules. We do not provide legal advice, and we encourage you to utilize available resources for more information. We are happy to support the import of any additional information required into our systems.

Courtesy: Alom Technologies (JIAN's fulfillment house)

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