More and more sellers on Amazon are facing the problem of shipping their goods to FBA. The price, time limits and reliability of the FBA forwarder certainly matter.
But besides that, every entrepreneur should know exactly what documents he needs to prepare before shipping. The brokerage office will ask for an e-copy (Excel file) of a commercial invoice and your consignment packing list, for proper clearance of your goods in China (any other country of shipping) as well as for the customs services in the USA.
The supplier should provide these documents. Forwarder does not request the documents from factories, so the responsibility for providing them entirely rests on the ordering party. While registering the goods, brokers can contact factories for further details, but be prepared that most of the clarifications and information about your goods will be requested directly from you.
Commercial invoice should contain the following information:
- Country of origin (always write the real information)
- Full name and address of the product importer (in this case, your contact information as the buyer of the goods)
- Full name and address of the supplier / manufacturer (There is no need to conceal or not to add the information about the factory in this document. Customs officer can directly contact the factory and clarify the details of the deal. The lack of information is not critical, but it will create additional delays in goods delivery)
- Full description of the goods in English. The material content of the product. (To correctly identify the customs code and simplify the procedure for customs clearance)
- Quantity of goods in the batch
- The value of one product unit including currency declaration (e.g. $1,50)
- Total batch value including currency declaration (e.g. $1500)
- The information indicated in the Commercial Invoice must correspond to the corresponding fields in the Packing List (e.g. the quantity of units of each product must be the same, both on the trading account and in the Packing List).
If any information is not specified in the invoice or the packing list, our specialists will contact you to clarify the details.
Note: Please indicate the maximum real prices of your goods. Even if you received them for free, it is best to indicate the maximum real price.
It is also important to remember that the cost of your goods directly affects the amount of fee when passing customs control in the United States.
An example of invoice (it can be downloaded and sent to your supplier)
Of course, this is not all the necessary documents for shipping your goods to the FBA. Read the following articles on our website to know what Packing List is, what other documents are needed and where to find them.
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