Paperwork and customs
The packing list nobody reads.
A packing list states what is in each carton and what each weighs. Customs reads it against the commercial invoice and against the bill of lading, and any disagreement between the three is a reason to look inside the container. Most first-shipment examinations start here.
The three documents that have to agree.
The commercial invoice says what was sold and for how much. The packing list says what is physically in the boxes. The bill of lading says what the carrier accepted. Authorities compare them, and the comparison is automatic and fast.
Disagreements are usually clerical: a carton count corrected at loading and not on the paperwork, a weight rounded differently, a description shortened on one document. None of them are fraud and all of them attract attention.
The consequence is time rather than a penalty. A container examined because of a paperwork discrepancy sits, and demurrage runs while somebody in another time zone confirms which number was right.
What a useful packing list contains.
Carton numbers, so a specific box can be identified. Contents per carton, in the same words the invoice uses. Net and gross weight per carton and in total. Dimensions, because volumetric calculations depend on them. Marks and numbers as they physically appear on the boxes.
For a consolidated shipment, one list per supplier feeding a consolidated one. The individual lists are what let an inspector or a claim identify whose goods a problem belongs to, and merging them destroys that.
For anything sold by count, the count has to be the count. Short shipment is common enough that counting at loading justifies the supervision on its own, and the packing list is what the count is checked against.
Why it matters after arrival too.
A claim for shortage or damage rests on it. Without a carton-level list, an insurer or a carrier has no basis to accept that something was missing rather than never shipped.
It is also what your own warehouse receives against. A list that describes contents in the exporter's shorthand rather than in your terms produces a receiving process that guesses, and guessing is how stock records drift.
Questions buyers ask.
Can the supplier just copy the invoice?
They frequently do and it defeats the purpose. An invoice is organised by line item and price, and a packing list has to be organised by carton so a specific box can be found. Where they are identical documents with different titles, nobody can check anything against anything.
What if the weight is slightly different?
Small variance is normal and expected. What causes problems is a difference large enough to suggest the container holds something other than what was declared, or a difference between documents that should agree exactly. Consistency between your own papers matters more than absolute precision.
Who prepares it?
The exporter, and you should tell them what you need on it rather than accepting their standard format. Asking for carton-level detail and your own product descriptions costs them nothing and saves you a receiving problem on every shipment.
Read next.
What happens at customs
Who does what between the ship arriving and the goods leaving the port, and the four things that hold a container.
Container loading and what actually fits
The cubic capacity figures in circulation disagree with each other. What really decides a load is weight, geometry and the carrier's own specification.
Inspecting before it sails
The five moments worth inspecting, what a report has to contain, and the mistake that makes an inspection worthless.
Demurrage and detention
Two different charges buyers confuse, both on a clock that does not care whose fault the delay was.
Commercial invoice and packing list
The plainest documents in the set and the ones that stop the most shipments, because customs and the bank read them against everything else.
Bill of lading
The bill of lading does three jobs at once, and the third one is why an original in the wrong hands can hold up a container that has already arrived.
Sourcing from Indonesia?
Tell us the product, the quantity and the destination. We come back with what it involves before anyone talks about money.