Customs Paperwork That Files Itself, in 31 Countries
Every cross-border order needs the right customs form, the right Incoterm and the right return route — and the rules differ per destination. We built the system that decides all three and files the paperwork before the parcel moves.
Cross-border DTC operator · EU, UK, Switzerland, US, Canada
e-commerce!The Need
Selling physical goods from Europe into the US, Canada, the UK and Switzerland means every order leaves the single market and meets a different rulebook. A US shipment may need an FDA form; anything crossing a customs border needs a proforma invoice with HS codes, country of origin, declared values and an EORI number; the Incoterm decides who pays the duty and gets it wrong at the customer's expense. Returns split the same way — the European carrier network cannot handle a US return, which runs through a third-party warehouse on a different process entirely. Done by hand this is a per-order research task, and the failure mode is not a bad form but a parcel held at the border with a customer waiting.
The Approach
We built an order management system where destination drives every downstream decision. On order creation the system derives the Incoterm (DDP, DAP or DDU) from the destination, generates the proforma invoice with HS codes, origin and declared values, and produces an FDA 2877 for US shipments that require one — then submits the customs documents to the carrier's paperless trade API automatically when the carrier supports it, rather than attaching PDFs by hand. Shipping labels are created through a multi-carrier aggregator, with carrier detection deciding which orders qualify for paperless processing. Returns are routed by the order's own country: European, UK, Swiss, Norwegian and Canadian returns get a label immediately, while US returns go to a third-party logistics provider on an asynchronous, admin-approved path that is created without a label and must be polled before the customer is told anything. Every state change writes to an activity log, so a disputed shipment can be reconstructed after the fact.
