Effortless Roof Repair Invoice Sample for Export that Simplifies Your Billing Process

Roof repair invoice sample for Export

good morning and welcome everyone to our coffee chat on export documentations my name is brian beams and i'm the international trade specialist with the u.s commercial service and your host for today's presentation next slide some housekeeping items before we begin this program is being recorded everyone is asked to stay on mute if not speaking during the presentation audience members have two options to ask questions you can write in your question within the q a feature or please raise your hand to ask a question once the speaker acknowledges your hand raised please unmute yourself and state your question lastly the views and opinions expressed in today's program may not reflect the official policy and position of the us government next slide i'd like to take a moment just to inform the audience of the us foreign commercial service we are the trade and investment arm of your you your federal government a division of the international trade administration our mission is to promote u.s exports protect u.s interests and facilitate foreign direct investment into the united states we have a global reach uh our domestic field has over 100 offices nationwide internationally our offices are located within the u.s embassies and consulates in over 70 countries next slide i would now like to introduce jim trubitz and kristin mourinho our friends at mohawk global back once again before we get going a little background on today's presenters jim truebits is the vice president of business development for mohawk global jim has over 40 years of knowledge with free trade agreements customs compliance logistics and supply chain management he his experience encompasses courier c air in northern border operations he is a regular speaker for international trade groups including the ontario exports and buffalo world trade association jim earned his ba from suny buffalo and went on to complete an executive program in supply chain management at the l'oreal institute he is also a graduate of the international air transportation association's air cargo training program graduating with distinction finally jim is a licensed customs broker and a certified customs specialist our other speaker kristen morneau is a senior consultant with mohawk global kristin is also a licensed customs broker and certified customs specialist who has worked in international trade compliance and logistics for nearly three decades prior to joining mohawk kristin worked for micro semi-fdt in beaverly massachusetts as the senior manager of global logistics and compliance where she managed licensing of ear and itar commodities and shipping activities her experience with manufacturers has given her the opportunity to create and manage import and export compliance ctpat or seatpat and training programs while being part of the supply chain and customer operations kristin's duties include import and export gap analysis compliance manual development production excuse me product classification and doc and dos licensing assistance and training without further ado i will hand mike over to jim and kristen please take it away thank you so much brian i want to thank you of course in the u.s commercial service team for inviting jim and i to speak today we're looking forward to our export documentation coffee talk coffee talk so i hope everybody brought their coffee and they're ready to go we're excited today to talk to you about export documentation we're going to go over the basics of what is necessary with your export documentation we're going to give you some ideas of some pitfalls some ideas on dealing with particular situations as they come up and some red flag situations so i i've been with mohawk for about six years as um brian had commented and in my experiences work with a lot of exporters on setting up their export programs setting up their export documentation and working on tools and utilities to improve those all the way from manual to automated processes and i'm very excited to be here with jim today jim your museum when it comes to export documentation it's important okay we we know this and and how many times have we seen a christian where a company gets uh into trouble because they didn't really fill out that paperwork right and or rely on some of the resources that are available to help them get it done most definitely and you know documentation is it's the root of your story it's what you're doing your transaction it's your commitments to each other it's assuring that the ability for goods to cross international borders is up to up to par the information that you need as the exporter information your customer may need as the importer is all intact and being able to build that documentation do it in a compliant format and be able to do it consistent and repeatable and you know that's part of our hope for you today is to make sure that you feel confident in those nuts and bolts and some triggers to be looking forward you know looking out for in the future so export documentation as a whole it's going to tell a story and jim those elements of that story are yeah so here here's the one thing that i think people fail to understand sometimes is you'll you'll be on the phone with them and they'll be walking you through the invoice and then you're looking and going well it's you're you left off some of the parties that were involved you know and and what it is it's not really describing it well you know and and where it's going you're saying it's going here but then it's ultimately going there so we want to make sure that your documents tell a complete story you know in in things as much as you know what it's worth is it in australian dollars or u.s dollars little things like that can make a big difference and uh duty impact for your buyer and with terms is it net 30 is it cash in advance is it on a letter of credit and inco terms and kristen let's face it it doesn't matter what inco term you sell under you really need to pay attention to those export docs most definitely and you know we'll talk to you a little bit today about some of those cases where your export documents may be more simplistic and it's basic export filings that happen but if you're dealing with things such as export licenses and carne's and department of state or commerce exemptions and exceptions it's going to be so key to make sure those additional elements are reported and you as the exporter are making sure that it's actually relating the export filings and that's where coming back to that that who what where when why of the transaction make sure you're laying out all those fundamental elements and that they're accurate and auditable back to your sales documentation you know one of the things that you and i see all the time in and it's it's a struggle for exporters is sometimes the information that was put in there by the project engineer limits what they do or the actual ear erp system limits what they can do so you know this is something that companies have to kind of look at it and say okay fine we might have some you know limitations how can we get around them i think that's really a big important consideration that needs to be discussed because let's face it kristin you you worked uh out for exporters before and no one's erp system's perfect no none of them are perfect and you know hopefully for those of you who are the logisticians in your company that you've got those great relationships with the it teams and that when you've got the opportunity for system enhancements and system upgrades to be using the elements of your erp system to try to generate that documentation it's going to eliminate a lot of human error making sure that unit values are correct that part numbers are accurate that you're not having to retype the address for a party to the transaction like jim said we know that for many people especially when they're starting out commercial invoice is going to be something they're creating in a word or an excel environment we urge people to make sure that if they download a template you can download one from our website there's plenty if you hit the google different templates out there that it hits each of these key elements that we talk about today you may see ones with a lot of other additional elements irrelevant to your transaction or you may have times where somebody asks for an element to be added but to make sure that whichever version you're using in your own progression as a company tells each of those key elements make sure it focuses on who all the parties are what the product is where the conditions are as far as inco terms any other responsibilities when this is happening is that generates information to help with duties and taxes as well as your payables the right kind of value and the right kind of payment terms tell that full story so let i apologize this is probably our only eye chart we got these these are some of the more common uh documents and we're going to go into in greater detail so i didn't want to say too much here but you know except that uh the more common ones are the pro forma the commercial invoice the packing list the shipper's letter instruction and a certificate of origin so without further ado i'm going to let you take this one kristin thanks jim so the invoicing side of it we love to hear the word invoice that quite often represents to us an ability to collect revenue and that's always the bottom end of the game here isn't that so two different type of invoices will come a lot come up a lot either being the performer invoice or what may be called the commercial invoice or customs invoice so the performer invoice based on the word proforma is intended to be an invoice for before the transaction it's meant to be preliminary it's the ability paired with the information from your quotation to confirm pricing to your customer possibly possibly you need them to be able to prepay having a performant invoice is the type of mechanism that's going to do that if your customer is issuing a letter of credit the performer invoice is the document that they're going to pretend they're going to present to their bank to be able to draw up that letter of credit the perform is also an opportunity to tell your customer the elements they should expect to see in the commercial invoice when you actually ship the actual product it's a chance for them to look at the descriptions and ask you any questions that may cause any concerns for their import capabilities in the other country it's also their chance to double check your addresses agree on the payment terms and make sure that everybody's on the same page with all of those key elements so the performance that great before so for pro performa you got it chris christen when it comes to pro forma style sometimes you know people say why can't i just use a quotation sheet and you mentioned very important reasons one for payment for letters of credit uh but also sometimes there's situations where they need to apply for an import license in that country so that being said you know this pro forma will work where a quotation won't exactly exactly that's a good point on the import permits and import licenses and you know we even see here in the us new opportunities popping up or such things may be a requirement so the performer may start to breathe a lot of new life into itself you better believe it now when we're actually going to ship that product out the door our key document the the ultimate document on the full story is going to be that commercial invoice so the commercial invoice is going to be that representation of the who what where when it's going to be the document which your freight forwarder or yourself as you're doing the export it's going to be very key in making sure the information that needs to be relayed through the freight company or for an aes filing is done it's going to be able to and quite often times the document which is used to actually be able to pay you as a company now you may have the chance that you have separate regular fiscal invoices that your customers pay off of or with the commercial invoice being a reflection of the fiscal invoice that may be the document quite often if there's banking involved this document will be the presented invoice if there's letters of credit involved site drafts things such as that now the big big important part of this commercial invoice when you're exporting is that the other country is going to be looking at this your customers import broker is going to utilize that information even if it's a fedex or a dhl they're going to utilize the elements that are here to properly clear customs in that country so this is where you want to make sure for customer satisfaction your message is as clear as possible if you're vague in certain type of areas and will hit those key areas you run the risk that it may get delayed clearing customs in a foreign country you know jim and i will talk about some of those but not having that address correct if it doesn't match their address possibly as an importer in the system in the country that could turn into causing a delay as it has to get clarified and we know in a variety of countries those delays can sometimes be very quick sometimes they can be very long and ultimately those those delays can sometimes lead to never actually being able to release the cargo and it being returned or seized so some of those like i said those the buyer and the consac name how many parties to the transaction are there you know the the old-time commercial invoice would just basically have your bill to and your ship too and quite often that would be the same party is that actually the case you know we know quite often when we're shipping to countries like hong kong and china that we may actually run into that there may be an intermediary consignment and then an ultimate consequence is transitioning between parties possibly you're shipping to an integrator first or to a 3pl on behalf of your customer making sure all of those parties to the transactions are listed you know inco terms incoterms is going to be a very key one in that where are you actually by your intent with your shipment passing the risk and the cost for the shipment from the seller to the buyer the incoterm is going to express that for you this is your ability to have that um that agreement documented in your transaction the invoice has to have those really good pieces your accounts and your waste and jim and i were talking about this before you know pieces means a lot of different things for some of us you know peace means one i've got a mug i'm going to ship one mug out the door what if we're shipping a fluid maybe it's something that's more like kilos or leaders or some other unit of measure shoes are going to be in pairs it's very key to make sure that when you're putting on your documentation what the product is that you also have that unit of measure and you're helping them to understand what it is um if you have things that are sold in kits to be able to utilize that it is one kit said to contain five different items for example so being clear in there isn't only gonna help your customer to make sure they're getting the product that they're anticipating but many duties and taxes are based off of things such as pairs or kilos or square meters for even uh so there's some fun ones out there so make sure you're being good about that and you know our next one here which is so important and jim you know when we think about description of goods there's so many different things you have to think of i i agree um kristen one of the things that i constantly are seeing is where people abbreviate descriptions and i just saw one the other day and then said gasket gskt it didn't indicate the type of material the gasket was made out of so let's face it a rubber gasket's classified differently than a plastic one versus a cork gasket so or a metal gasket so all that information is important there's a second thing here that's kind of important on on description of goods and and you and i are going to go into greater detail in a couple of minutes but serial numbers so why would you show a serial number if you're sending something a lot of times companies when they export goods they offer a warranty on them and if this good comes back and forth you know from overseas back and then back overseas if they have a documented by the serial number on the paperwork um then they're probably going to be offered you know reduced duties or no duties or no taxes upon return to the the other country after the goods have been repaired or only maybe have to pay duties on that repair portion so this is so important the other thing i wanted to mention here too is the reason for export not everything's for sale sometimes it's on a consignment sometimes on loaner lease sometimes it's being returned after being repaired all this has to be part of your story you know jim you know you and i when we see the different reasons that people export one of those reasons we see that pops up a lot is that it's a sample or it's a free of charge shipment and you know looking for avenues to make it that your customer overseas pays as little in duties and taxes as possible and you want to make sure that you know we're going to talk about valuation but that the goods are properly valued but that if it is going to be a reason of export or something like a sample tell that story this item is a sample ship free of charge to the consignee but you're still going to declare that value for customs purposes so that's really key to make sure that with your story of why you're doing the export that you give some information related to it if it's not a standard type of purchase and sale we we really push that people do include the eccn or the us military code if they're shipping itar product going out of the country so having that export commodity control number even if it's ear99 or if you have a control dccn helps to tell that customer overseas if i'm going to now re-export these goods not only do i have to follow the rules of the united states in that destination control statement we have listed but here is the eccn or the itar number associated with the product so i can do the research of u.s regulations and your customers localized regulations before they transfer that product the more information you give them up front the ability for you to feel confident that you've done a pass-through of those compliance elements now we've got country of origin here and that's one of those two we got to be so conscientious on our countries of origin countries of origin are intended to be the country where the goods were manufactured this is not meant to be the country of export and when you're thinking about country of origin you know it sometimes there can be some gray or some confusing in there you know is is it really in the is it really in uh the u.s if i had all the stuff made in china but i put it in a box in the u.s well boxing does not constitute a change in in your origin so really look at your country of origin and if you've got a question and i ship sub-assemblies to one country and then it was manufactured take a look at rules for your specific product or reach out to a professional who can help you that country of origin isn't just for the purpose of giving good information but quite often that country origin will dictate how it clears customs in the other country different duty rates may apply based on the country and one of jim's favorite ones if a free trade agreement pops up having that country of origin is the first thing that triggers the possibility for being part of that right jim you got it it's so important um we go through this all the time where uh items are partially fabricated in one country and then finished in another uh it you know those rules of substantial transformation have to be looked at and they have and you have to look at not just your country but also the the country of import and so sometimes this is one of those ones where you're going to have a discussion with the overseas broker possibly as well you know in some countries we would always say to you make sure you send a copy of the invoice to your customer ahead of time for approval make sure that there isn't a missing element that would be able to help them you know as somebody had pointed out and asked the question should the hts code be listed on the commercial invoice and this is one of those you know uh anna this is a should yes would i by default yes however if you run into the case where your customer is saying in my country that's not the tariff number i need you to put a different number down or they believe that interpretation wise it's going to cause issues it is not mandatory to include on the commercial invoice so in those cases where you've got a customer sales person saying it really needs to be this other tariff number the the good negotiation between the two is don't include it leave it as a blank now that could cause your customer problems in a lot of countries and that they're looking for that information to be there so that's where jim please lend your opinion but in mind include it but if somebody's going to have a debate about it just exclude it exactly um and this happens constantly uh even between the the three usmca countries there's been rulings where u.s customs says the goods are classified this way in canada and mexico there's been core cases that say nope we're going to classify it this way in those instances you're just better off leaving it off the the commercial invoice you know and like one of our our guests have pointed out that some of the courier systems the fedex ups dhl systems they require you put it in they require you put it in for two different purposes one of it is because it is a best practice type of element but the other one is because quite often when you're using those small pack providers you're utilizing them to file your aes documentation so they're going to be feeding that through to the next module to conduct your transaction but yes it and that's where you know you say best practices have it but if there's an issue or conflict just leave it off okay kristin i i i think the the the advice you gave everybody earlier about reviewing that commercial invoice with the buyer in the overseas freight forwarder prior to to exporting the goods to make sure everything's correct i think if more exporters did this it would save a lot of trouble um you know certain countries like you know let's say brazil or india where if you're going to export the goods and they get there and there's a problem with the paperwork you've pretty much given yourself a restart and it could get very very expensive quickly you know it's probably a good idea that you know especially first time to a country or first time to a new customer and that's going to give you a sense of vibe if we need to do this repeatedly or the one time gives you an opportunity to learn from it too and ultimately we know the customer experience making sure that it's got enough elements for clearance quickly one of the questions i get asked a lot is if you have a no charge item or sample what value do you use and you know my best advice would be to use a replacement value it and at least or comparable to another one of your models you know it's a red flag if they see a similar item on the invoice for let's say electric motor for 66 bucks and then they show no charge item one dollar that's a red flag most definitely and that's what we said on those samples uh countries have the right to be able to charge duties and taxes and you know i've got a customer right now who's facing a case where they did ship out samples at one unit price and now that they're shipping the product and it's significantly higher it's been stopped they want verification of the costing model for it so understanding that your best of intention to help somebody pay low duties there's other ways to do that or they are responsible to pay duties and taxes and we can't be able to impede upon that and that's where you know we go from there to these other elements here is that you are signing a commercial invoice that the information is true and correct there will be a true and correct statement which should be on your commercial invoice right after a destination control statement now the destination control statement is required on a commercial invoice that is not ear99 if there's an assigned eccn you're shipping under a license an exception code itar examples um on a carne so on and so forth however where the destination control statement is not required on ear99 it is best practices to include it on every single commercial invoice this is also if nothing else it's the biggest band-aid to make sure that nothing goes wrong once you've passed those goods on to your customer should they decide to re-export them or need to send them back to you that destination control statement is going to be a reminder to them that these goods did come from the united states or are of us origin and do need to abide by u.s regulations you know even if it's an ear99 it may have issues with it if the customer is planning to ship it to an embargo nation for example and the best that you can do is make sure that statement the current version of it make sure you're up to date is on as much documentation as possible to make sure you're reiterating that so a customer can't come back and say you didn't tell them that this item couldn't move on to iran or north korea the all there right jim you got it what about true and correct statement um should you be signing those invoices and what color pen kristen you know pens are an interesting thing in our business jim if you want to be something is going to be original always sign in blue on a shipping dock those guys your best bet is only to have blue for your team down there you know black most countries it's not going to be an issue um but certain countries are going to require us an original and with an original signature blue is easiest to tell so again one of those just to make life easy in most cases with my shipping docs where i've worked we only have blue pens on the dock and we also know that customs uses red so you never use red to sign a document for customs right jim that's right you know we've talked on and off about description and somebody had actually paid a bit of a question here on description so there you should give as much information as possible for the person on the other end to be able to understand what the product is i have a customer right now who is facing an issue with the foreign shipment because the product is liquid and typically that item doesn't usually ship in a liquid form it's usually in a powdered form so the corruption we made to their commercial invoice was that moving forward they would give the um the part number of the product the description of it and then they would include in liquid form or in powder form because that was a question that was coming up repeatedly at destinations and like jim said having a good description that includes serial numbers you know it depends on the company and the commodity but the more high level the equipment is i would definitely try to have that serial number in there you know jim when we're doing commercial invoices there's also the reality that sometimes we're shipping with a freight forwarder and we also have time at times doing those career moves and you know when currier is doing an export and clearing the shipment in a different country things are a tad bit different when they're using their carrier bonds versus the importers continuous bond or whatever is required in the country so you know with the fedex they're really looking at the information you're generating at a high level and putting that tariff number in there when you're looking at a freight forwarder situation and it's more going to have a different perspective on customs and definitely the under the importer id is really where having that deep description is so important so for the person who commented that a little bit of is you know fedex are they actually really paying attention to that additional information you need to keep in your mind that just carrier mode versus air freight mode just has a different level of attention to it so guys at fedex are great they're a fabulous organization but they're not going to necessarily carry uh catch every little nitty-gritty detail so if you do have a shipment with peculiarities to it that could cause problems in clearance it might be a case where you want to look at going with the reporter instead kristen a couple important things here when it comes to descriptions as well as if you are taking advantage of a free trade agreement you want to make sure the wording is similar or identical on the paper so you so if your free trade agreement just says power supply and they turn out turns out that the a620 model doesn't qualify for the free trade agreement they're going to disallow all power supplies if that's only wording ahead on your free trade agreement so that's something to keep in mind when it comes to making sure the second thing is the description of your your article should be more that should use words that are described in the tariff for lack of better words i think that that's a really important takeaway because you know from customs point of view they want to know if that power supply what the kilowatts is on it for example or how is it going to be used is it going to be used in an induction furnace these things will help customs to classify the goods as well and speed the clearance through on export as well as import most definitely and think about that exactly as jim said as you're classifying the product if you're looking at motors for classification is it ac is it dc what are those watt kilowatt outputs give that information up front in that description and you're going to immediately gain some respect on that transaction if it is something the liquid versus the powder form go ahead and put that if you're if you found that the unit of measure is something peculiar that you don't normally report on your commercial invoice if it's something that's in like a tape or an acrylic type of area also list that on there those are questions that are going to be asked so the more information you give in your cargo the better off you're going to be now there are some cautionary notes right jim yeah one of one of the things that um before we move on to kristin in in a giraffe there's an important consideration for some of these companies that are exporting larger pieces of machinery that are knocked down and they should be indicating it on their commercial invoice in the body that this thing's knocked down because customs will allow you to classify it as a complete unit in that country you know for export purposes for the schedule b if it's one knock down um you know thermal extruder for you know plastic extrusion you want to make sure that it says that and that it's knocked down so they when they see the four containers they'll understand it's just one unit and you only have to have one breakup furniture another good example that'll quite often come in unassembled so you really do want to think about that and think about how you're shipping the product now you know when you're telling a story on your description you want to give enough information that the person on the other side understands so you don't want to be too vague you know just having that part number there nobody's going to understand what you mean now you've offered to the officer that he can ask some questions getting better is giving that high level descriptive you know in this case that we've got that it's a lan adp part well there could be multiple areas within the tariff that that ultimately uh clears customs so i'm going to get a bit more deep detail and give that optical transceiver for alien adp system now if i know that there's another element of a transceiver which is consistently asked for i'm going to include that information too now you know for the person who also you know when you ask the question about giving too much information giving too much information yeah you do want to be a bit cautious on that too one thing that i quite often see those you who are more in our military sector that um is somebody will put a description on a product and they'll put something like military you know that this mug or this phone case is military when we're saying that something is military you're going to raise the red flag about the control if the element of military is truly just a design and aesthetic for example that it's just dressed in camouflage you know i put that the the coloring is camouflage or something like that don't just put that it's military and if the color is irrelevant you know go ahead and put that as more of it in parentheses type of thing if you're going to have camo and red and green and yellow so that way it doesn't open the question of is something about this graded for military purposes so there can also be a little bit of the going too too far given your complete bill of material breakdown isn't going to be necessary or the entire description on your website but making sure that it's it's short consistent astute tells the story of what the product is and gives somebody the ability to visualize it right jim yeah one one of the big takeaways i try to tell everybody is look at the tariff description that associated with that schedule b number or go to cross and see how their customs is describing you a similar article for import that you could use that same description for export um or work with your forwarder and broker on it it's better to ask now than wait till later you know if you've got one of those companies where in your erp system they say no no it has to be worded this way because this is how our system works look and see if there's a flex field underneath that can be populated for more descriptive text there's there's usually if you work with your it department's ways to be able to expand upon that you know and just get back to that that you know like jim said um make sure that your description helps to justify why you did the classification but don't make your description a copy and paste of the tariff that's not what your product is make sure it's your product but that you've drawn the conclusion to the tariff description but sprinkle some little tariff description words in there kristen okay so chris um you know you and i know that this was probably one of the most awaited things that we couldn't wait for at one point is we used to have an itar destination control statement and the ear destination control statement and we finally got a combined one and i think it was on november 15 2017 but it could be 16. it seems like it's been years ago now so hard to tell but i know i remember the november 15th i just can't remember the exact year but you could google it and find it on our website but this is the statement that should be used now on a commercial invoice not the old destination control statement and i'm still seeing the old destination control statement showing up and pop quiz back when those days when we had separate destination control statements what did you do if you had both commerce and itar controlled in one shipment yeah it was definitely one of those that we needed to migrate to one statement so that way it was more simplistic and it was more all more encumbrance and the answer is that you would have used the state department control destination control statement you know on here jim we we've also got um the fact that somebody's going to sign that you know and they're going to see this statement and somebody's going to give a signature to it somebody had asked us that is it okay to have an electronic signature instead of hand signing the document in blue you know a lot of countries are going to be perfectly fine with electronic signatures it's not going to be an issue at all this is where you really need to think about the countries that you're dealing with we really urge the blue if you're going ahead and it's going to be anything licensed anything that's going to be needing documents presented for any kind of licensing purpose either export or import banking documentation and those countries that require a actual blue signature like jim said the number one that always pops out at us is going to be brazil brazil is very keen on seeing that original and that's where you may want to end up with your shipping group putting together a list of the the times where you must have a blue signature versus that it's just okay to go ahead with that electronic one you know because in that signature gym they're attesting to something aren't they they're telling exactly i i've seen shorter versions of that certification statement where they put i hereby certify that this invoice is true and correct uh i mean you know you want to make sure that it's it's sending the statement that this is the only invoices the true and correct invoice this is the price paid or payable by the overseas party so jim a question for you that that popped up from our last little bit of conversation uh when you're talking knock down we are talking uh your basic unassembled goods did you want to elaborate any more on knock down okay so now we're talking about some of the general rules of interpretation and it's actually a two-part rule if you look at that and so besides knock down it could be incomplete um you know you could send a car uh out of the country um this is probably a bad example but if the wheels are off it it's incomplete but it still has the essential character of the finished unit so um you know this is where you know sometimes it might be missing uh some of the piping or something on a a filtration unit but it's still a filtration unit in the essential character it's a filtration unit so as long as you're going to want to describe it as knocked down but you know missing or you know minus uh piping or something like that you know elaborate yep and those of you who you know if you are working on those kind of project goods and stuff like jim said you're going to have to look at your specific rule and if you're dealing with that kind of project work odds are you'd probably have other good purpose to be talking to somebody in the trade um in the chariot compliance area that can help you to make sure that that is accurate thanks so packing list um and a lot of people i i've seen the packing list that uh people have and they're they're not showing much detail at all and and this is one of the big challenges still is so you have to remember the reason packing exists is so important on an export transaction is one it's used for export formalities and import formalities so if customs wants to examine the goods before they are exported or in or when they're being imported they can go through that that shipment and look and see how everything's picked and and find the article they want to examine the other reason that you'd want a good packing list is your your buyer when they get these goods they can check them off and receive them into inventory the third reason yeah go ahead just echoing you jim that you know for that customer to get that that's going to be their ultimate checklist so you know both for the customs guy and for the customer yeah and then ultimately uh and hopefully this never happens but it does periodically happen you need good detail in the event that yeah someone has to put in an insurance claim on that that shipment for whatever reason it's lost it's damaged you need a good packing list so so keep that in mind that the packing list is going to serve some other purposes as well and and you know so you wanted to maybe have you're going to want to add things like the marks and the weights and the dimensions we work in imperial everybody else works in metric so keep that in mind if you got reference numbers pos you're going to want to keep those on there as well so the more detail on this the better juan raised a good point that you know he finds that on a packing list quite often detailing things such as the lot information things that are going to busy up a commercial invoice too much or be able to be appropriate for quality inspections and inventory management and the same that if you do have some of those items that you really want to give a detailed breakdown of the contents but the ultimate item is shipping at a parent level the pack list is a better opportunity to give tons of micro details that would just possibly confuse the transaction on the invoice i see it with serial numbers all the time kristin where they they could have a hundred serial numbers on the pack list so that's important now the other thing too and we talked about this with knock down shipments so i'll bring it up because this hap actually happened to an exporter that i know that sent goods over to to ukraine they actually had they couldn't fit everything into one container so they took at the last minute they took one of the pelts and threw it into the other container kristen they forgot to tell the people up front who did the documentation so this shipment showed up in ukraine and they opened it up in one container it was supposed to have 10 pieces had 11 the other one was supposed to have 10 had nine and that shipment got delayed for three months so let's put this way now it was not a happy moment so you know if you have people in the back of the house doing certain things in uh and then you know you have customer service people doing other documentation make sure everybody's talking most definitely that communication is so key between your operations process and group and your shipping department um if you're making you know if you've got automated good systems in place make sure there's ways that either it goes on hold so somebody can't transact until the updates are done or some mechanism in place to be able to catch it in a busy environment the next forum kristen i'm i'm kind of excited to hear what you have to say about because i just saw on the newswires yesterday where they're talking about the national customs brokers association wants to update this form because of some recent penalties issued by no less u.s customs yeah so the shipper's a lot of instruction this is really this is your key communication document when you are exporting a shipment through a freight forwarder you know they've got your commercial invoice and it may have information that them is the logistics operations doesn't matter as much to them it's going to have you know about your payment terms and other other information what they're going to go back to is this shipper's letter of instruction which used to what was it v7525 back in the old days canary orange scd in here you're going to be giving that freight forwarder a ton of valuable information some that doesn't actually need to be on a commercial invoice too you are going to tell them are you related to that party overseas you're going to be telling them if this is a routed transaction who is responsible for the costs associated with it and maybe if somebody else is supposed to be the usppi on the transaction for the export you're going to detail information if there's a if there's an export license if you're using an exemption or an exception you're going to be giving them granular information on if this had come in on a temporary import bond if it's hazardous material you're going to further detail things as far as your weights your descriptions you're going to give the details per pallet on what those dimensions were and of course that's going to be very important in case anything happened with the cargo in transit you're going to make a statement engine this is one of my favorite ones that you know i see pop up for people is on the left hand side you're going to see a field that's marked d or f d or f is for domestic or foreign are the goods u.s origin are there foreign origin for this purpose on the sli it is just a d or an f now your commercial invoice is detailing up that actual country so let's think about it if we're saying that something is country of origin china and it's leaving the us to go to germany it's going to be an f because the goods are chinese origin it's not going to be a d because the goods are departing the united states of america i've seen many cases where a shipping department has been told to put d there and they put that d in there on every shipment subsequently so it's really important to understand that it's not uniform with what we're putting on a commercial invoice and for people to understand that is speaking origin of goods not departing origin of the material so this sli you know um each freight forwarder is going to give you their own version there are some standard out there some freight forwarders will accept the standard some will only accept their own you want to make sure the key elements are on there but most important jim when you're when you're doing that shippers letter of instruction you're doing a really important thing down the bottom when you sign it you are actually giving a limited power of attorney for that transaction for that freight forwarder to make your aes filing and any other requirements that need to be followed so when you're signing that you want to be sure that you understand that if you're somebody on the call who hasn't felt warm and fuzzy about some of the attributes of it definitely take that time to find out that shows your conscious compliance as an individual as well as on behalf of the organization so please feel free if any questions on there pop up definitely jump out and ask those questions kristin before we move on to the next slide i was going to say that i had a company that prepared a shipper's letter of instruction and the forwarder who prepared the eei didn't follow the shippers out of instruction when questions came up they were able to provide this to the bis and said this is the information we gave them we don't know what they did with the filing because so this is your this is your control document to manage that discussion on what what export controls and what export control information you provided to the freight forwarder you know if you are somebody who is shipping licensed goods or if it was something that came on an import exception and has to cite that import exception on the exportation your ability to make sure that act is accurate is so important so you do as you are the one who's signing this you should be able to get back from that freight forwarder evidence of the filing and if you had any type of license exception license details be able to see the detail level to make sure that that was conveyed so think about that as you as having the exporter responsibility that you've got that audit trail now for some reason you couldn't get access to that information like jim said this is your ability to be able to say you receive a psv or something or something's done inaccurately here's how i conveyed the information now the freight forwarder needs to you know go ahead and make fixes and make updates for the where necessary so then we've got our certificate of origin as one of the other most common documents that's out there and you know there's plenty of others that you may be asked of uh to generate for different types of purposes or based on the country that you're dealing with but the certificate of origin in its in its genuine intent is just to establish the country of origin of manufacture of the goods we're in the most global world that we've ever been economically nowadays we're seeing consumer product demands through the roof goods are moving around the world with varying countries of origin not just from the us but from other nations too so having that accurate country of origin and declaring that on a certificate is very key should it be requested by your customer now quite often having on the commercial invoice is going to be sufficient but some customers are going to want that specific certificate having that specific certificate there's some fun words for you may be actually an ability to help your customer to have reduced tariff rates so it's key that the information is on there and accurate this is going to be another one of those that you're going to be signing so when you're going ahead of signing this you're signing a document is accurate you may also have at times that your customer says that it needs to be a chamber stamped version of a certificate of origin a freight forwarder mohawk if you're using you know a mohawk type forwarder we would help you in getting that chamber stamped um you can actually go to your local chamber of commerce if you're in a small town they may not know why you're asking and be a little confused but if you go to uh the major cities closer to the ports the chambers are used to stamping those documents sometimes they want them notarized it can vary and sometimes they want very specific forms and jim is going to talk to you about one of those very specific forms exactly kristin you raised a really really important point and um exporters before they send that that shipment out of the building one of the questions they should be asking their buyer is what documentation do i need and and you know because sometimes you're going to get the shipment and it's now sitting at at an airport overseas in the middle east and they're saying we need a certificate of origin and um it's a holiday the next day so you know the earliest you're going to be able to get that is the following monday and export it out in the meanwhile that thing's racking up storage and emerge at the airport so better to have that answer that question beforehand and ask you know what documents do you need do you need a certificate of version how many copies of the commercial invoice do i need do i need originals a lot of these questions need to be asked up front you don't want to have a surprise at the end yeah i remember the good old days where it was always an original plus three copies you know so so definitely if you're dealing with a new country middle east countries uh licensed shipment shipment that has any kind of additional banking to it make sure you understand upfront those specific amounts that they want exactly so kristin you mentioned about different certification or free trade certifications this is just one of numerous ones you know we we have multiple free trade agreements and customs actually has created a really nice form and anybody wants it i'd be glad to send it to them where they captured all the the major free trade agreements we have now on the certificate so if you wanted to send something to singapore for example you can click on it and it pulls down the singapore information on the certificate but you know this is our latest free trade agreement is the usmca and you know we're coming up on a year july 1st last year was the start of it the one thing that kristen's really important to remember is this requires new data elements and you don't really need a form but um so many companies like mohawk and even customs now have a form that you can use but you could put this information just as easily on your commercial invoice and so this is something that's important but the one thing chris and i found rather interesting is the nafta certificate doesn't have the same data elements exactly so you're not not able to use it anymore so that that's kind of like an important thing to keep in mind most definitely um you know and in here is that if you're looking at doing one of these certificates for a free trade agreement is making sure that you're doing the proper vetting to make sure your product and your transaction qualifies for that free trade agreement uh it's not as simplistic as that first certificate of origin where you're just saying yes we made that here in this country it's more doing some analysis to see if it meets requirements based on values of localized versus foreign content or how the tariff number works from the imported to the final goods so make sure you know if somebody's saying to you well it needs to be this version and we made it right here make sure you're you're helping to do that due diligence you know and jim we've gotten a few fun questions that have been popping up okay cool so i'm going to actually this first one i'm going to read off for you that goes back to our sli so um ange is asking us who is responsible for filling out the sli for an ex works routed transaction the supplier exporter or the freight forwarder contracted by the foreign principal party of interest okay so as i said earlier it doesn't matter what incoterm certain documents you have to provide um it's considered a routed export transaction my opinion is it's going to be the exporter who's going to prepare that who's going to are you going gonna sign it is a different question right kristin there you go yeah yeah and that's to the person's question you use the terminology of fppi so it sounds like the foreign principal party of interest has done the right things with their contracted freight forwarder to file the information however they need to make sure the information is right and you as the exporter likely going to be the one to have the most accurate information but to jim's point i wouldn't sign the document that way they're definitely using the foreign principal party's um statistical information right jim yeah uh there is some cases where someone's a self-filer kristin and in that case they're gonna need to get written authorization from the overseas party to do the filing yeah okay um got a few other fun ones here jim are export service fees supposed to be included in the value of the commodity on the invoice india requires it to be added to the total value however i've received conflicting answers oh good old price payable okay so um so this this one um could come down to the country that you're doing business with you know the world customs organization back in 79 we had every country sign on for the transaction value or price paid or payable um you know for for for determining the value under transaction value certain items they consider to be added to the value if they're considered the cost of doing this export service fees um without knowing exactly what they were it's hard to say um you know certain export service fees like packing those are considered dutiable but they're named in the transaction value rules so maybe they can send us more information we'd be glad to research yeah you know and there is in there and part of your question about having it included um in the value versus possibly as a line item valuation that may also depend on your incoterm on how you're actually transacting the good if it would be below the line or above the line so yes i definitely need a little bit more information in there um one pointed out a great part that you and i were talking about about making sure that when you're um your units of measures and the information that you have isn't just satisfying the exporting part but it's also satisfying the import part quite often you may have somebody who's asking for things in a different language or in a different stand a different measurement making sure that yes you can provide that for your customer but you as a us exporter have to make sure that you're providing the information for the export purposes from the us as well and we had a great question here where did that one go well we answered the one as far as signing the document oh there was a question i have to scroll up and find you but as far as having the statement on the performant invoice i believe what that person was asking is if we should have the destination control statement on the performa invoice so i'm one of those difficult people because i'd be perfectly happy putting that destination control statement all over every single document wallpapered everywhere within a transaction so yes there isn't a requirement that you must include it on that performer invoice but i would say to you 100 percent do included on the performer invoice the reason being that is your way to affirm to your customer i am giving you u.s goods should you not have told me that these are going to transfer to another country i'm telling you before i actually ship the goods to you so now's your time to clear up any type of information uh jim what are your thoughts so um i i agree that the destination control statement uh wouldn't hurt to have it on the pro forma one of the things that and i'm not an international attorney and neither are you kristen but i think that one of the the important details of a pro forma invoice would be to have an arbitration clause and that would be something that your company should probably work with if you're an exporter with your your an international attorney to make sure you have an arbitration clause that requires if there is any issues