Commercial invoice: the paper customs and your buyer both read
What a commercial invoice must say, where it differs from a proforma invoice, and the mismatches against the LC and the packing list that hold a shipment.
A commercial invoice is the bill for the goods, and it is the document customs values them from. Every other paper in the shipment repeats it: the packing list matches its items, the certificate of origin repeats its names, the LC names it as a required document. So the invoice is where a shipment's consistency starts, and a figure that stands there alone is the discrepancy nobody can wave away.
What it must say
Seller and buyer with their full legal names and addresses, an invoice number and date, the country of origin, the terms of sale with their port, a line per item with quantity and unit price, the currency, and the total. Customs reads it against the tariff code and the duty. A total without its currency, or a sale term without its port, is a query at the counter.
The invoice date is not the shipping date, and the totals are the money the buyer owes, not the money received. A document that reads like a receipt confuses both. Keep it a bill: who owes what, for which goods, on which terms.
Proforma and commercial are different papers
A proforma invoice is the offer: prices and terms for the buyer's import permit, letter of credit application or advance payment. A commercial invoice is the bill that ships with the goods. The two share a shape, which is exactly why they get mixed up. If the figure on the commercial invoice does not match the proforma the LC was opened on, the bank sees it before your buyer does.
Rewrite the proforma into the commercial invoice the day the shipment is final: real quantities packed, real terms, the LC's own wording where it names one. An offer carried forward verbatim is a figure looking for a discrepancy.
The three-way match that clears customs
Read the invoice beside the packing list and the LC, line by line. The packing list must account for every item the invoice bills. The LC's required documents clause names the invoice and fixes what it must show: a phrase required there has to appear on it. Goods described one way on the invoice and another on the B/L is the mismatch a customs officer writes down.
The same test catches the quiet ones: a weight the packing list does not carry, an origin word the certificate does not use, an HS line the invoice never mentions. Fix them on paper while the shipment is a draft, because after sailing an invoice correction is a new original and another courier.
Where Ara helps
Give Ara the commercial invoice with the packing list and the LC and ask for the mismatches in items, figures, names and required wording. It reads all three sides and lists what differs, in the order the desk will be asked. The comparison stays on your PC.
Not sure where to start? Type a product name and get the first four digits of its HS code, free: TradeGraph HS code finder (opens in a new tab)
Turn the guide into your next shipment's documents.
Ara runs on your own PC and drafts the export documents with you: it reads the LC terms, fills the checklist and keeps every version. You stay the one who signs.