The commercial invoice is simply the purchase invoice for your shipment. You purchase goods from a supplier, and the supplier sends an invoice with the value of the items you have purchased. 🙂
We need the commercial invoice to handle customs matters for you. Customs have various requirements that an invoice must meet, and the key points are listed below.
Upload a commercial invoice for the number of units you are going to ship per product. If you have purchased 1000 units of a product but are only shipping 500, upload a commercial invoice for 500 units!
It must be an "invoice" or "commercial invoice." A "proforma invoice" will not be accepted.
Both the selling party (your supplier) and the buying party (you) must be clearly stated (address details and the company name on your DV).
A description of the goods, the number of units, unit price, and total value (in USD).
The invoice must have an invoice number and invoice date.
Additionally, it is highly desirable for the goods code (HS code) to be mentioned. This speeds up our processes, and we also need the HS code for customs clearance of the goods. When the HS code is stated on the commercial invoice, customs don't have to look it up themselves. By doing this, your shipment is always cleared under the correct HS code. This way, you know how much customs duty you have to pay.
The incoterm should also be mentioned on the invoice. Make sure to include the incoterm you indicated when creating your booking on the invoice.
Example Invoice
In the image below, you can see a simple but correct example of the type of commercial invoice that your supplier needs to send so that you can upload it when creating your booking. The text highlighted in bold blue represents the required fields to obtain approval of the purchase invoice and, therefore, your booking. Using this template, you can request all the necessary information from your supplier and ensure that your supplier sends the correct commercial invoice.
Of course, this is not the only way to prepare the purchase invoice, and your supplier may have a completely different format. That's not a problem. The example invoice is provided to give you an idea of what we need to handle the import and customs clearance.
Always ensure that the invoice requirements (information within the blue boxes on the example invoice) are included and that it is a commercial invoice (not a proforma), so that your booking can be approved as quickly as possible!