Creating an Invoice

Shipper will creates an invoice based on the agreement prior to orders are putted to them. If buyer decided the term of shipment they wanted is " payment before shipment date and after inspection" In this case the invoice will be issued by shipper after inspection date and the payment should be received by them then they will directly arrange the exportation to destination as agreed. One of our buyer decided the payment term is on documents against payment , this mean the invoice will be performed once the goods were already been exported and after all documents required are completely provided then they will send the invoice along with the other documents to bank for arranging the payment.

The contents of an invoice that I ever made up as follow:

• Beneficiary. This party are commonly issue the invoice to be performs to buyer and also beneficiary as receiver of the payment from buyer.
• For account and risk of Messrs. This party is destination of the invoice performed. Commonly buyer are stated as to be this party. But sometimes buyer has decided the other name and address to be filled in this space. 
• L/C date, its number and the issuing bank. If the term payment are stated on L/C, those information are always stated on the invoice created up.
• Inconterm. This column will be filled in by FOB, FCA,C&F, CIF, Ex-work or others terms based on  both parties shipper and buyer agreed.
• Information of the carrier or vessel. Exportation from Indonesia to Japan is almost using direct vessel, so that the vessel is only one stated on this column. Differently, Exportation to Europe or USA is always has the vessel transits in Singapore or Malaysia, so that the vessel will be showed on the invoice are containing two vessels.
• Shipment route. The shipment route is consisting Port of  Loading, Port of transit, Port of discharge, and Place of Delivery. If the shipment is using direct vessel, the port of transit wouldn't be showed up. The shipment date is also showed on this column
• Consignee and applicant, Some buyer also decide to ask shipper to mention the consignee and notify party as showed on its B/L.
• Description of goods. The description of each goods are commonly mentioned on the purchase order, for instance " Ladies pullover 100% acrylic". A description of goods are consisting design or product name and composition.
• Style and order number. An order usually has an order or purchase order number and style number for identification purpose. So that the style and order number are very important things to be mentioned on each shipping and financing document as an identity of each order are putted to shipper.
• Color name and number. The color name and number are always mentioned on each invoice. Sometimes the difference color will leads to difference price of each color.
• Size. Mentioning size of each product in invoice is a must, because each size range usually has a specific price. The baby size will be different with the boy size, because material consumption for each size range will be different.
• Quantity of product. Quantities have to be performed on the invoice to calculate the total amount of each color, size, and all total quantities to be delivered to.
• Unit price. Of course, the unit price should be showed on each invoice to calculate the total amount to be paid by buyer.
• Total amount. The total amount of each shipment will be mentioned on the invoice. This is sometimes followed by total amount in words.
• Total quantities. Commonly, the total quantities are mentioned on invoice to show buyer what the actually quantities to be exported to them.
• Total box, the nett weight, gross weight, and its volume.Those information is not only important for buyer, but this is also using on the clearance process.

All those invoice contents are very important to give an attention when we are willing to create an invoice. And the correct contents will lead buyer can easily to process the payment, identification and of course, for the clearance the goods in customs.

In case you have an exportation of salesman to France, now customs will check the price once upon the exportation and payment process. It is a must to mention on both invoice for customs and payment in the same price. Our buyer in France reminded us to do this, because if this is not followed will leads to the penalty applied to buyer.

For all the above things, you have to contact constantly buyer regarding of invoice they want to create up. So that they can protect any unwanted thing happened to them.