How does a proforma invoice work?

Proforma invoice

For orders bound for non-EU countries, the required customs documentation (proforma invoice) is automatically generated. This information is also sent digitally to the shipper when the shipping label is created. In order to do this, the required information has to be available in the system. If that is not the case, the order will be blocked. The notification will specify what information is missing. A standard template is used for proforma invoices. This is because shippers want to receive these invoices in a standardised format.

Missing prices
To create a proforma invoice, the price of every product in an order must be available. For most orders, we will import the invoice from the webshop and get the pricing information from there. However, no price will be available if products are added to an order. This may be the case for things like split and added products. There are two ways to resolve this issue:

For split products, an option can be selected to list the original product on the proforma invoice instead of the underlying products. The price of the original product will be known because it was sold via the webshop. For a product, there is an option to automatically add it to the proforma invoice with a certain price. There is also an option to replace the price of a product that was imported from the webshop with a different price.

Customs statements
It is possible to add customs statements to the proforma invoice. This can lead to lower import duties, such as if there is a trade agreement for certain products. These customs statements can be set in the MontaPortal.