invoice for customs

Aladine

for international orders, I need to edit a simple invoice to be attached outside the package. There's no way to print it from the order page (at least not the way I need it, without images, without shipping costs, without buyer or seller information other than address). Such invoice is necessary to avoid that a package is stuck in German customs. With BrickLink, I can easily use the copy of invoice sent to my email address (copy/paste and change a bit), but no way to do that with any of the Brick Owl notifications. Ok, for a small order I can just type an invoice, but what if there's an order for hundreds of parts? I love the immediate checkout here, but it's no use if I have to spend so much time in editing paper work.

Lawrence

I will add it to the task list

Aladine

thank you

DagsBricks

Can't you print a packing slip from Paypal?

Brian

Aladine

No, PayPal doesn't have a list of the parts. Custom invoice should show quantity and price of each item, grand total (without shipping costs), and name/address of buyer and seller.
And it's worth adding such invoice OUTSIDE the package (and the custom declaration slip of course). I never had a package stuck in customs, no package to the States ever took more than a week (small packages often took only 4 days), and even packages to Asia, Russia etc were very fast (the longest ever was 3 weeks for 2 kg to Russia).

Lawrence

I have made a basic invoice, could you take a look at it and see if you have any issue with it? You can access it from the 'other actions' drop-down. I'm afraid I don't understand why shipping information should not be shown on an invoice?

walstib

For me it is still way to much info, mostly with the space listing contents takes.

One line of plain font printing per part would be a goal I would set. For me just the part #, quantity and price would do. Condition, colour, category, weight is all more ink to me.

One address would do, tracking # may not be known yet anyway, shipping method, payment method, order status not needed either for me.

Imagine the devolution scene in Altered States if you've seen it. Something that a dot matrix printer could handle.


Some countries have different import regulations where shipping is either included or not when calculating the threshold for where duty starts.

I believe Aladine's point was to have this information separated on the invoice so the respective customs offices can make the appropriate judgement. Just a grand total is not enough.

Thanks for your consideration,

Joe

Lawrence

Righto, I have removed some more necessary information. It is probably still too cluttered that I'd like to get some more input before removing information that other people might need as invoicing requirements will vary between countries.

Aladine

walstib is right, much too much

Please make it easy and short or give us just a text or HTML file which we can easily edit the way we need

Lawrence

@Aladine could you comment on what bits are too much for your needs?

Aladine

the list is fine now (although only the item ID without description would be enough and help to get it on less paper sheets).

too much: payment method, payment currency, order date, shipping method, store name

shipping price should be optional (custom officers are sometimes silly and will just look at the grand total even in countries where the duties should only be calculated on the parts value)

only put buyer's shipping address, not the billing address

However, I would be happy with that if I can just use the list and put it via copy/paste into my invoice