Docket documents screen: outstanding documents by container and supplier, each marked discrepancy, missing or awaited, with its due date. — Documents — what's verified, what's awaited, and by when.

Commercial invoice: what must be on it, and who decides

A commercial invoice is the seller's bill for the goods and the document an import declaration is built from. The importing country, not the seller, decides what must be on it: US customs law enumerates eleven items, including every charge itemised by name and amount. Those fields are the valuation rules restated, so a one-line delivered price is both a compliance gap and a higher duty base.

Commercial invoice: The seller's itemised bill for goods sold for export, and the document an import declaration takes its value, description and origin from. Its required contents are set by the importing country's customs law rather than by the seller.

The eleven things US customs law requires an invoice to set forth 19 CFR § 141.86(a). Four of them — the itemised charges, the currency, the assists and the country of origin — are the valuation and origin rules asking the same questions through the invoice.

Every document in an import pack is produced by somebody. The bill of lading comes from the carrier, the certificate of origin from a chamber or an authority, the declaration from your broker. The commercial invoice comes from the seller — and it is the one the rest are checked against.

That asymmetry is the whole subject. The document with the most weight in the file is written by the party with the least interest in the importing country’s rules, before the shipment exists, and it cannot be corrected afterwards except by asking that party for a new one.

The seller writes it. The importing country specifies it

A supplier tends to treat the invoice as a bill. The customs administration treats it as a declaration of facts, and several of them publish what those facts are.

The most explicit published list is American. 19 CFR § 141.86(a) sets out what each invoice for imported merchandise “shall set forth”, and it runs to eleven items. Two of them do most of the work.

(8) All charges upon the merchandise itemized by name and amount, including freight, insurance, commission, cases, containers, coverings, and cost of packing; and if not included above, all charges, costs, and expenses incurred in bringing the merchandise from alongside the carrier at the port of exportation in the country of exportation to the first port of entry in the United States

(11) All goods or services furnished for the production of the merchandise … not included in the invoice price

Read those next to the customs value rules and the invoice requirement stops looking like paperwork. Article 8.1 of the WTO Valuation Agreement adds commissions, packing, containers and the value of materials, tools or design work the buyer supplied to the price actually paid or payable. Item (8) is the itemisation that makes the first group checkable. Item (11) is the assists disclosure. The invoice rule is the valuation rule, asked at the point where the answer is still cheap to get.

Singapore states the requirement more briefly and at the other end of the process: the commercial invoice is among the supporting documents to be produced at the inward checkpoint for conventional, air and land cargo, alongside the packing list and the bill of lading or air waybill, and supporting documents are to be retained for five years. Gulf administrations commonly want the original for a commercial consignment rather than a scan.

Why a one-line delivered price costs money

The commonest defective invoice is not fraudulent or careless. It is tidy. One line, one delivered figure, no breakdown: the shape a supplier uses when the buyer has never asked for anything else.

It costs on two counts.

It fails the invoice rule, because a delivered figure itemises nothing by name and amount. And it raises the duty base, because the charges a customs value leaves out are only left out on a condition. The Interpretative Note to Article 1 excludes post-importation transport, assembly and the importing country’s own duties and taxes “provided that they are distinguished from the price actually paid or payable”. Nothing distinguished, nothing excluded. The inland leg you paid for after the port is inside the number the duty rate is applied to.

The remedy is not an argument at assessment. It is a line in the purchase contract saying what the invoice will break out, agreed while the supplier still wants the order.

The five readers of one document

An importer’s invoice is read by more parties than anyone plans for, and each reads it for something different.

Reader	What they take from it	What a mismatch costs
Customs	Value, description, quantity, origin	A value query or a classification dispute, with the box on the stack
The bank, under a letter of credit	That the goods match the credit’s description	A discrepancy, and documents held against payment
Your own ledger	The cost lines that become landed cost	A landed cost figure that does not reconcile to what was paid
The inspector, where a certificate is required	Description and quantity against what was inspected	A certificate that describes a different lot, treated as no certificate
The insurer	Insured value	Under-insurance discovered at the worst moment

The consequence common to all five rows is time. A held consignment does not stop accruing: free time runs while a value query is open, and the demurrage that follows is charged on days nobody chose.

What the pack has to agree on

Four facts appear on the commercial invoice and are restated somewhere else. They are the ones worth checking before filing, because a mismatch in any of them is visible to the reader and expensive to correct.

Description. The words on the invoice have to support the HS code filed and match the description on the certificate of origin and any inspection certificate.
Quantity and packages. Against the packing list and the bill of lading, piece for piece.
Value and currency. Against what the bank was instructed to pay, and in the currency the purchase was actually made in.
Country of origin. Against the certificate, and against the preference being claimed.
Beneficiary bank details. Against the account already on file for that supplier, never against the covering email. The commercial invoice is where a changed account arrives looking official, which is why payment diversion screening reads the document against the contract party rather than trusting the letterhead.

None of that is hard to check. It is only tedious, and tedium is what gets skipped on the morning the vessel berths.

What this means for the desk

Every field the rules require is knowable before the goods ship. The breakdown, the currency, the assists, the origin, the description that will carry the classification — all of it exists in the purchase contract and in the supplier’s own records weeks before anyone files anything.

Which makes this a chasing problem, not a filing problem. On a US import the invoice is also where the declared value comes from: CBP’s cargo release transmission wants an estimated shipment value alongside the seller, the manufacturer and the origin, and the data elements a US import entry needs are mostly facts somebody else is holding. Somebody has to send the supplier the invoice format the destination requires, check the invoice that comes back against the four facts above, and go back when a line is missing. Then go back again, because the first reply is rarely the complete one. That is the work import document checking software exists to do, and the same lines, once captured, are what a cost tracking system has to reconcile against at the end.

Questions traders ask

What is a commercial invoice?

The seller's itemised bill for the goods, issued for a completed sale, and the document the importing country's declaration draws its value, description, quantity and origin from. It is not a proforma invoice, which is an offer, and it is not a tax invoice, which exists for the seller's own domestic tax. On an import it is the number your duty is assessed on and the description your classification is defended with.

What must a commercial invoice contain?

The importing country says, and the clearest published list is in US customs law. 19 CFR § 141.86(a) requires each invoice to set out the port of entry; the parties, time and place of the sale or shipment; "a detailed description of the merchandise, including the name by which each item is known, the grade or quality, and the marks, numbers, and symbols under which sold by the seller or manufacturer"; the quantities; "the purchase price of each item in the currency of the purchase"; "the kind of currency"; "all charges upon the merchandise itemized by name and amount, including freight, insurance, commission, cases, containers, coverings, and cost of packing"; rebates and drawbacks allowed on export; "the country of origin of the merchandise"; and anything furnished for the production of the goods that the price does not cover.

Does a commercial invoice have to be in English?

For a US entry, yes, in effect: 19 CFR § 141.86(d) requires that "the invoice and all attachments must be in the English language, or must have attached thereto an accurate English translation". Other administrations vary, but a translation attached to the original costs nothing and removes an argument at the counter.

Is a commercial invoice the same as a proforma invoice?

No. A proforma invoice is issued before the sale is settled — a quotation in invoice form, used to open a letter of credit or apply for an import permit. The commercial invoice is issued for the actual shipment and is what the declaration is filed on. Filing against a proforma figure and paying against a different commercial figure is one of the ways a value query starts.

Do I need the original commercial invoice?

Often, and it depends where you are importing. Singapore Customs lists the commercial invoice among the supporting documents to be produced at the checkpoint for conventional, air and land cargo, and requires supporting documents to be retained for five years. Gulf administrations commonly ask for the original for commercial consignments. Treat the original as travelling with the pack, not as a copy someone can email later.

Who issues the commercial invoice?

The seller. That is the whole difficulty: the document with the most legal weight in an import file is the one document neither the importer nor the customs broker writes, and it cannot be corrected after the goods ship without a revised invoice from the supplier — who has already been paid attention to and now has less reason to answer.

Related terms

Customs value — The value of imported goods on which customs duty is assessed. Under the WTO Valuation Agreement the primary basis is the transaction value — the price actually paid or payable for the goods when sold for export — adjusted by the additions listed in Article 8 and by no others.
Packing List — A shipping document listing the physical contents of a consignment package by package: quantities, shipping marks, net and gross weights, dimensions and which goods are in which package or container, without prices.
Certificate of Origin — A document certifying the country in which goods were produced, issued by a chamber of commerce or a designated authority, used by customs to apply duty rates, quotas, trade remedies and preferential tariff treatment.
Bill of Entry — The customs declaration an importer files to clear imported goods in India, filed electronically on ICEGATE, normally by the CHA, and required before the goods can be assessed, duty paid and the cargo released.
Letter of Credit — A bank's written undertaking to pay a seller a stated amount against a presentation of documents that complies with the terms of the credit, governed in most trade by ICC UCP 600.
Incoterms — The ICC's eleven International Commercial Terms, which allocate delivery point, risk transfer, cost allocation, clearance duties and insurance obligations between a seller and a buyer in a sale of goods.