The United States of America is a really big market with diversity in demography and requirements. With the advent of the internet, consumers are bombarded with myriads of products and services from across the globe.
In such a situation, the demand for foreign goods shoots up consistently. The domestic business owners are pushed to a proposition where they are forced to import goods from abroad. It is progressively upside for the business owners, when comparing the increase in volume of business they get. But the downside of importing goods is that these business people have to go through the lengthy process of customs clearance.
Even though most of the steps for importing goods are made online in the USA, still the tedious task of timely follow-up and submission of required documents is huge. Import broker firms/ custom broker firms like Clearit USA customs brokerage firm can help you with a seamless import process if you can manage to produce the documents to them.
It is a general rule of thumb that all documents should be ready for submission at least 72 hours prior to the despatch from the country of origin. This way, the last minute hassles can be avoided. Here is a list of documents that you could keep as a checklist before importing goods into the USA.
Importing by truck
- Bill of sale.
- NAFTA
- Country of origin
- Product description
- unit price.
Importing by Ocean
- Bill of sale/commercial invoice
- Arrival notice
- Manifest
- Country Of Origin
- ISF receipt.
Importing by Air
- Commercial invoice
- Airway bill.
- Rest of the documents from the freight forwarder.
These are some of the basic documents one should prepare before importing the goods. Apart from the above-mentioned documents, the import agent might ask for more documents considering the type of goods you are importing.
One of the most tedious documents to prepare among the above-given docs is the ISF filing. It requires a lot of information to be correctly filled in so that no rejection or alteration is required in the future.
The most important documents for ISF filing are:
- Name and address of supplier
- Name and address of buyer/importer
- Stuffing location of the container
- Identification number of the consignee
- ISF number
- Delivery address/final death address
- Country of origin of the goods
- Harmonised Tariff Schedule numbers, etc.
It is not possible to keep track of all these documents when you are a busy business owner with lots of other errands to attend to. So the safest option is to hire an import broker to do the job for you while you can still focus on the business and expect a safe delivery of the goods.
