A garment shipment is really two shipments: the goods in cartons, and the paper that lets them move. Miss or mismatch one document and a container sits at port accruing charges while emails fly. This is the whole paper trail in the order it appears, written by the people who prepare it.
The documents, in order of appearance
| Document | When | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Proforma invoice | Before production | The quote formalised: goods, quantities, prices, Incoterm, terms. Basis for your deposit. |
| Commercial invoice | At shipment | The legal bill. Customs assesses duty from it. Must match reality exactly. |
| Packing list | At shipment | Carton-by-carton contents, weights, dimensions, how customs and your warehouse find things. |
| Bill of Lading / Air Waybill | On loading | The transport contract, and for sea freight, the document that controls the cargo. |
| Origin document | With shipping docs | What clears your goods at 0%: REX statement (EU), origin declaration (UK), B255 (Canada), Form A (Japan). |
| Inspection certificate | Optional, pre-shipment | Third-party confirmation the goods passed AQL before sailing. |
The consistency rule customs actually enforces
Customs doesn’t read documents, it cross-references them. Invoice quantity vs packing list. Invoice value vs your bank transfers. Declared composition vs the garment a lab might test. Origin claims vs the transport route. Every mismatch is a flag, and flags become inspections, and inspections become weeks. This is also why under-declaring value is a trap beyond its illegality: the paper trail and the payment trail must reconcile. Payments and documents, together, here.
Who does what
The factory issues the proforma, commercial invoice, packing list, and origin document, and books the inspection. The carrier or forwarder issues the B/L. You (or your broker) file the import declaration using all of the above. A competent exporter sends you a complete, matching document pack before the vessel arrives, which is exactly what our export team does on every order. The full process, step by step.
First shipment ahead? The step-by-step import guide walks the whole journey, or ask us for a sample document pack so your broker sees everything before it’s real.