How to read an export quotation.

The nine lines.

Most quotations from Indonesia arrive as a short message or a one-page document, and most are missing at least three of these. That is not usually evasion. It is that nobody told the exporter what a European or American buyer needs in order to compare offers, and buyers rarely ask for it explicitly.

Product and grade

Not the category. The grade, the process, the size and anything else that decides what physically arrives. "Robusta grade 4, screen 16" rather than "coffee".

Quantity and packing

How much, in what, and how many units per carton or bag. Packing changes the volume, the freight and sometimes the price per kilo.

Unit price and currency

Per kilo, per piece or per cubic metre, stated with the currency. A price with no unit is not a price.

Incoterm and named place

EXW, FCA, FOB, CIF and the place. This decides what the number includes, and comparing an FOB price to a CIF price is comparing two different products.

Validity

How long the offer stands. Agricultural prices move with the crop and a quotation from three weeks ago may be a historical document.

Lead time

From order or from deposit, and whether it includes the documents. The distinction matters when a holiday period sits in the window.

Payment terms

Deposit percentage, what the balance is due against, and the account. If the balance is due on shipment rather than on inspection, that is a decision you should make deliberately.

Documents included

Which certificates the price covers and which are extra. Analysis, fumigation and origin forms all cost something and all get quoted separately when nobody asks.

Minimum order

Theirs, in the unit they think in. It is frequently different from what a buyer assumed from a website.

What an absence usually means.

A missing Incoterm almost always means FOB, because that is the habit in Indonesian export. For a container that is the wrong rule and it leaves a window at origin where the seller carries risk they cannot control, so it is worth changing rather than accepting.

A missing validity usually means the exporter has not thought about it, which becomes your problem when you come back three weeks later and the price has moved. Ask for a date on every offer, and expect agricultural offers to be short.

A missing document list is the most expensive absence. Certificates that were never quoted appear as charges later, or worse, appear as a shipment that cannot leave because nobody arranged them. Ask which documents the price covers before you compare two prices.

Comparing three offers properly.

Convert everything to the same Incoterm before you look at the numbers. An FOB price and a CIF price differ by freight and insurance, and those are not small on a container from Indonesia. Most buyers know this and a surprising number still lay the numbers side by side.

Then check what is physically in each offer. Different grades, different packing and different moisture content all move the price legitimately, and an offer that looks cheap is often answering a different specification. This is why the specification comes before the request for quotations rather than after.

Finally, look at what each exporter asked you. A supplier who came back with three questions about your market has understood the job. A supplier who returned a price by return with no questions has priced something, and it may not be what you asked for.

Questions buyers ask.

Read next.

• Incoterms for Indonesian shipments

  Almost every quotation out of Indonesia says FOB. For a container that is the wrong rule, and the body that writes the rules says so.

• Negotiating without breaking the order

  Six moves and four traps, about business mechanics rather than national character. What to fix before you discuss price.

• Paying an Indonesian supplier

  T/T, letters of credit and documentary collection, what each actually protects, and the five rules that stop a deposit disappearing.

• How long a first order really takes

  Eleven stages, most invisible in a supplier's lead time. Which run in parallel, which cannot, and where it breaks.

• 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.

• Certificate of analysis

  The laboratory report on a shipped lot. What belongs on it, why sampling matters more than the figures, and why retained samples settle disputes.

• Writing a specification suppliers can price

  The document that decides what arrives. What belongs in it, what has to be measurable, and the words that cause disputes.

• What a proforma invoice is for

  The document a deposit is paid against and a credit is drafted from. What it must contain and what it does not prove.

• Currency risk on an import order

  Most Indonesian export trade is in dollars, so two currencies move against you. Where the exposure sits and what reduces it.

• Export terms, in plain language

  The vocabulary a first order throws at you, defined without jargon and with the trap attached to each one.

• Grades and grade names

  Premium, Super, Grade A. Which grade systems are real and what to write instead.

• What the price is made of

  Knowing where the cost sits changes what you negotiate. Which parts move and which do not.