The commercial invoice (or pro forma invoice) is the customs document you’ll use most often when shipping Internationally. Required for all non-document shipments, it is the primary form used for importation control, valuation and duty determination. Supplied by the shipper, the commercial invoice identifies the products being shipped, including a description and value of the goods and shipper information. Customs may use it to assess applicable duties and taxes.

When generating the international consignment in MachShip, you will have been prompted to provide all the information needed to generate this document and pass it on to the transport provider.

To generate the document, you will need to do the following

1. Setup your signature

As this is a formal document, there is a requirement that there is a signature shown confirming all the details are accurate. MachShip has enabled users to link a digital signature to their user via my preferences.

To do this, select the admin cog and My Profile

Select Upload Signature

Select the Signature

Then Upload the signature

Note you will need to use an external party to obtain your signature image

You will then select Update My Profile

2. Generate your Commercial Invoice

You will be provided with two options, namely.

Upload Invoice -  where you can upload your own generated commercial invoice

Generate invoice - Where you would utilise MachShip's generated commercial invoice

If you select generate Invoice MachShip will generate the invoice and (if applicable and setup) will print out the document or send it to the transport provider.

You will then see the Manage Commercial Invoice  modal shows like the below:

You will have options to 

I. Download the invoice

II. Resend the invoice to the carrier

III. Delete the invoice

When downloaded, the Invoice will appear as below:

Once a commercial invoice has been successfully generated, the aeroplane icon will change colour to green

How to Multi-Generate Commercial Invoices

The Unmanifested, Active, and All Consignments grids will allow for multi-generation if you need to generate commercial invoices for multiple consignments. 

To do this, simply select the consignments you wish to generate invoices for via the tick box on the left-hand side.

The selected rows will be highlighted, and you can then select the Actions drop-down and generate Selected Commercial Invoice.

You will then be asked to confirm the generation by selecting Generate Commercial Invoice.

All commercial invoices will then be processed through to generation and show with the successful green aeroplane.

How to setup MachShip to Auto-print  Commercial Invoices

If you want to set MachShip up to facilitate the automated printing of commercial invoices on consignment creation or the manifest, you will need to install the MachShip Printing Application. I've included for you the end-to-end instructions below.

How to Setup Automated printing

To facilitate printing the commercial invoice, you would need to set the following fields on the Printer Configuration.

This would prompt one copy of the commercial invoice to be printed when the call is made to generate it.