Configuring your shipment's Incoterms

Overview

  • Starshipit supports specifying the Incoterm of a shipment for DHL Express, DHL eCommerce, UPS, DPD, Royal Mail, FedEx, Seko and Australia Post eParcel (AGPL services only).
  • Incoterms is an acronym that stands for International Commercial Terms and relates to how you manage the duties and taxes required when shipping internationally. 
  • The most common Incoterms in freight delivery are DDP (Delivery Duty Paid) and DDU (Delivery Duty Unpaid):
    • DDP (often referred to as Sender Pays Duty) should be used when you would like to pay the import charges, taxes etc on behalf of the customer. This is the Incoterm used when your customer prepays their duty charges at checkout to you, the seller so that when the package goes through customs they aren't charged again
    • DDU means the obligation to pay customs charges are on the buyer, rather than the seller. 
  • Starshipit has many different ways for you to specify which Incoterm you would like to use detailed below

Set your default option within the courier settings

  1. Go to Settings > Couriers > Select your courier settings > Advanced.
  2. Tick or untick the Duties and Taxes Paid/Sender Pays Duty option depending on what you would like your default to be.

Use rules to automatically assign Incoterms

You may wish to apply Incoterms based on certain criteria. For example, all orders under $100 should be DDU or all orders to the EU should be DDP. You can configure this using Starshipit's rules engine.

  1. Go to Settings > Rules > Create a new rule.
  2. Select the relevant condition for when you would like the rule to apply.
  3. Set the action to Set Sender Pays Duty = True (DDP) or Set Sender Pays Duty = False (DDU).

On an order-by-order basis

You may wish to only specify specific orders to have a different Incoterm than the rest of your shipments. For example, if you were sending out an exchange and the customer already paid taxes you may want to set the new order to DDP so that you pay for the customs charges. 

  1. Open the order from the new orders grid.
  2. Tick the Duties & Taxes Paid box.
  3. Print the order as per usual.

Want to deliver great shipping experiences?

Start a 30-day free trial or book a demo with one of our shipping experts

Was this article helpful?
0 out of 0 found this helpful

We're sorry you didn't find this helpful - please help improve this article!

We're always looking for ways to get it right.Please help others by submitting your feedback here