Five trade documents from one set of data.

What each of the five documents does

A shipment generates five documents because five different people ask for them, and each one reads a different part of the same order. The quotation is the first thing a buyer sees: a price, an Incoterm, a lead time and a validity date. It is an offer, not a demand for payment. Leaving the validity date off is the common mistake — the buyer comes back four months later quoting a number that no longer covers your material cost, and you end up either eating the difference or reopening the conversation.

A proforma invoice is also not an invoice in the accounting sense. A buyer uses it to open a letter of credit, apply for an import licence, or remit an advance payment through a bank that will not release foreign exchange without a numbered, signed document. Because it is a bank document, wording matters: the same reference number, the same total and the same party names that will later appear on the commercial invoice. Some banks require a specific declaration, a signature in ink or a chamber of commerce stamp. This tool produces the text and the total; it does not supply those formalities.

The sales contract is the only document both parties sign. It carries the commodity, quantity, price, shipment window, payment terms, inspection, claims, force majeure and a dispute forum. The commercial invoice is the one a customs authority uses to value the entry and assess duty. It has to agree with the packing list and the bill of lading on description, quantity and total; a mismatch between those three is one of the more reliable ways to get a container held for examination. The packing list is for the warehouse and the forwarder: carton count, gross and net weight, cubic metres and shipping marks. It is also how an inspector decides which carton to open.

Two templates, one set of data

Both templates produce English documents. The interface can switch to Chinese for whoever is filling the form, but the paperwork stays in Latin characters because a bank, a broker and a customs officer on the other side have to read it. Chinese exporters already issue English paperwork as a matter of course, so the language switch is a convenience for data entry, not a second document format.

The difference is in whose block sits first and what the contract says. In the China exporter version the seller block leads, the tax field asks for the unified social credit code, the Incoterm defaults to an FOB Chinese port, payment defaults to a 30 percent deposit with the balance against a copy bill of lading, inspection at the factory is final, claims must arrive within 30 days of discharge, and disputes go to CIETAC arbitration in Shenzhen under Chinese law. In the US importer version the buyer block leads and is labelled importer of record, the tax field asks for an EIN, payment defaults to net 30 from receipt, the buyer may inspect and reject at destination within 15 days, ISF 10+2 filing and duty payment sit with the buyer, country-of-origin marking is stated as a seller obligation, and disputes go to AAA arbitration in New York under New York law.

Field order is not cosmetic. The party whose details appear first is the party whose reference and tax identifier land in the document header, and the clause set is chosen at the moment you switch the template — not by editing text afterwards. Switching templates keeps everything you typed: names, goods lines, currency, packing figures. You get the same commercial data with a different allocation of risk.

Where the numbers go wrong

Each line amount is quantity multiplied by unit price, and the total is the sum of those lines. Freight and insurance are not added on top. If you are quoting CIF rather than FOB, put the freight and the insurance premium in as their own goods lines so they appear on every document and the arithmetic stays visible to the person checking it. Editing only the final total produces a document whose lines do not add up, which is exactly what a bank or a broker notices first.

Units cause more damage than arithmetic. One hundred sets of a twelve-piece drill kit is 100 sets, not 1,200 pieces; writing the latter on a commercial invoice changes both the unit price and the declared quantity. Gross weight cannot be lower than net weight, and cubic metres come from carton dimensions rather than from the cargo itself. The HS code is harmonised at six digits internationally and gets longer depending on the destination country — do not invent the extra digits to make a form look complete. Currency should be a three-letter ISO code carried on every line; a quotation in USD that turns into a proforma invoice in EUR is a genuinely expensive typo.

Incoterms 2020 assign cost and risk at a named place, and the name is part of the term. FOB and CIF are for sea and inland waterway shipments; DAP belongs to a door delivery. FOB Shenzhen and FOB Shanghai are not interchangeable when the buyer is booking the vessel. Check the named place on all five documents, because it is the field most often copied from an old order without being read.

Customs, banks and legal limits

These templates are general commercial references and are not legal advice. They cannot tell you whether a term is enforceable in your jurisdiction, whether you need a different agreement, or whether the deal you are signing is a good one. Have a qualified attorney review any contract before signing it. Nothing here is filed with a customs authority, a bank or a government agency. Whether an entry is accepted depends on the rules of the importing country and on the accuracy of the classification, valuation and origin data you typed in.

For shipments into the United States, the importer of record — not the exporter, and not this tool — is responsible for the Importer Security Filing, duty payment, brokerage and admissibility. The US template puts that allocation into the contract and adds an EIN field, but a clause does not discharge a statutory duty. Country-of-origin marking, product-specific agency rules and any licence requirements are outside what a document generator can decide. Treat the output as carefully typed paperwork, not as compliance advice.

A worked example

A Shenzhen supplier quotes a Los Angeles buyer two lines: 100 sets of a 20V cordless drill kit at USD 45.00, and 100 pieces of DN50 pipeline valves at USD 29.80. The line amounts are USD 4,500.00 and USD 2,980.00, so the total is USD 7,480.00. The shipment is FOB Shenzhen, 30 percent deposit against a proforma invoice — USD 2,244.00 — with USD 5,236.00 due against the bill of lading copy. Twenty cartons, 412 kg gross, 380 kg net, 1.86 CBM, marked HL / LOS ANGELES / C/NO.1-20.

Fill those in once and press preview. The quotation carries a 30-day validity and the FOB named port. The proforma invoice carries the same total and the deposit. The commercial invoice adds the country of origin and the certification sentence. The packing list carries the carton count and weights. Under the US importer template the same lines produce a buyer-first header with EIN 12-3456789, an ISF clause, a 15-day destination inspection window and New York arbitration.

What matters is that USD 7,480.00 appears identically on all five. In practice that is where copy-and-paste workflows fail: the quotation gets revised after a price change, the PI keeps the old number, and the commercial invoice is typed a third time from memory. One dataset removes that class of error, which is the whole reason to use a generator rather than a folder of old spreadsheets.

What stays on your device

Names, addresses, goods lines, the logo image and the finished PDFs never leave the browser tab. There is no upload, no account needed to preview, and no server-side document store. The logo is drawn into each PDF from the file you chose and is discarded when the tab closes. Only an anonymous daily quota counter is checked on our side. If you are handling pricing a competitor should not see, that is the relevant property of this tool — not the feature list.

Free and All-Access

Entering data and previewing all five documents is free with no counter. A free export runs three times a day and contains the first two documents, the quotation and the proforma invoice. All-Access is a single USD 29 payment that opens all five, removes the daily counter, and covers every tool added later. There is no subscription, no renewal and a 14-day refund policy. The counter resets at midnight UTC.

Questions