What 19 CFR 141.86 requires on a commercial invoice, field by field
11 min read
Ariel SerravalleMost supplier invoices look fine. They have a letterhead, a line or two of goods, a total, and an Incoterm. Then you start keying and discover there is no country of origin on it anywhere, or that freight and insurance are folded into one number, or that 40 cartons of three different styles are described as "garments".
The list of what an invoice has to carry is not a matter of house style. It is 19 CFR 141.86, and it is short enough to read in five minutes. This is that list, with the part that is missing from the regulation itself: which field on your side each element feeds, and what to ask the client for when it is not there.
What the section is, and who answers for it
Section 141.86 sits in Part 141, Subpart F, which is simply titled Invoices. The neighbouring section, 141.83, is the one that requires a commercial invoice for each shipment not exempted, says it must be "prepared in the manner customary in the trade", and points at §§ 141.86 through 141.89 for its contents. The statutory root is 19 U.S.C. 1481.
The regulation is written as though it binds the document. In practice it binds the filing. CBP does not regulate a factory in Ningbo or a seller in Milan; it holds the importer of record, who under 19 U.S.C. 1484(a)(1) must use reasonable care in making entry, and it holds the broker who prepared it to professional standards. The supplier writes the invoice. Your desk answers for it.
The eleven elements of 141.86(a)
Paragraph (a) lists eleven things each invoice must set forth. The middle two columns are ours, not the regulation's.
| § 141.86(a) element | What it feeds | When it is missing or vague |
|---|---|---|
| (1) The port of entry to which the merchandise is destined | Port code; whether this entry belongs where it is being filed | Usually harmless on its own, but a port that contradicts the arrival notice is a sign the packet was reused from another shipment |
| (2) Time, place and parties of the sale — or, if not a purchase, the place from which shipped and by and to whom | Seller, buyer, related-party question, transaction-value support, manufacturer block behind the MID | You cannot show the sale the declared value rests on, and you cannot tell the factory from the trading company |
| (3) A detailed description: the name each item is known by, grade or quality, the marks, numbers and symbols it is sold under, plus the marks and numbers of the packages | HTS classification; the goods description on the entry summary | "Parts", "samples" or "garments" will not classify; a wrong guess here is the expensive kind of error |
| (4) The quantities in the weights and measures of the country or place of shipment, or of the United States | Line quantities and UOM | Quantity is a duty base for anything not purely ad valorem, and it is the field most likely to disagree with the packing list |
| (5) The purchase price of each item in the currency of the purchase | Line value | A single lump sum for a mixed shipment cannot be split across HTS lines without asking the client |
| (6) Where the goods were not purchased, the value for each item in the currency usually used — or the price the seller would have been willing to receive in the ordinary course of trade | Declared value on non-sale shipments: samples, replacements, consignment | Non-sale shipments are where "no commercial value" appears on the invoice, and that is not a value |
| (7) The kind of currency | Currency code, and therefore the exchange rate applied | An unmarked "$" on an invoice out of Singapore, Canada or Australia is a value error waiting to happen |
| (8) All charges upon the merchandise, itemized by name and amount, including freight, insurance, commission, cases, containers, coverings and packing — and any costs of bringing the goods from alongside the carrier at the port of exportation to alongside the carrier at the first US port of entry | Additions to and deductions from entered value | A single CIF number with nothing broken out; see below |
| (9) All rebates, drawbacks and bounties, separately itemized, allowed on exportation | Value adjustments | Rarely stated voluntarily; worth asking about where the trade is known for it |
| (10) The country of origin of the merchandise | Origin on every line; trade-remedy and quota exposure; marking | Nothing else on the entry can be finished without it |
| (11) All goods or services furnished for the production of the merchandise — assists such as dies, moulds, tools and engineering work — not included in the invoice price, excluding those furnished in the United States | Assists added to transaction value | Under-declared value that nobody notices until CBP asks |
Paragraph (8) carries its own relief: the cost of packing, cases, containers and inland freight to the port of exportation need not be itemized by amount if it is included in the invoice price and identified as such. That is a narrow allowance, not a general permission to lump charges together.
The paragraphs after (a), which are the ones people forget
The eleven elements get quoted everywhere. The rest of the section rarely does, and it contains the requirement that causes the most trouble at the desk.
- (b) Non-purchased goods shipped by someone other than the manufacturer must show when, where and from whom they were bought, and the price paid, in the currency of the purchase.
- (c) Merchandise sold in transit needs both invoices filed with the entry: the original one under which the goods actually began their journey, and the resale invoice or a statement of sale showing what the purchaser paid for each item.
- (d) English. The invoice and all attachments must be in English, or have an accurate English translation attached. A Mandarin or Italian invoice with the totals in Arabic numerals does not satisfy this.
- (e) Packing list. Each invoice must state "in adequate detail what merchandise is contained in each individual package". This is the per-package contents requirement, and it is the reason a carton-count disagreement between documents is a compliance question rather than an administrative one. That situation has its own triage: see when the invoice and the packing list disagree.
- (f) Weights and measures. If the invoice or entry does not disclose the weight, gauge or measure needed to ascertain duties, the consignee pays the cost of weighing, gauging or measuring before release.
- (g) Discounts must be set out in detail, for each class or kind of merchandise — every discount from list or other base price allowed in fixing the price or value.
- (h) Numbering. Multiple invoices under one entry are numbered consecutively, and where the invoices run to more than two pages the pages are numbered in a single series through the whole entry. A filing-mechanics rule, but a cheap one to comply with.
- (i) Anything required by the subpart may be on the invoice or on an attachment to it. Useful: a supplier who will not change their invoice template can send a signed addendum instead.
- (j) Name of responsible individual. The invoice must identify by name a responsible employee of the exporter who has knowledge, or can readily obtain knowledge, of the transaction. Almost no supplier invoice carries this, and almost nobody asks for it.
The three omissions that actually stop work
Country of origin. Nothing downstream can proceed without it. Origin drives the duty rate, trade-remedy exposure, marking, and half the partner-government questions. An invoice that names a shipping point instead of an origin is the most common version of this, and shipping point is not origin.
Per-package contents. The requirement in (e) is what turns "40 cartons, assorted" into something an entry can be built on, and it is what your examination exposure rests on if the container is opened.
Charges that are not itemized. One CIF figure tells you what was paid in total and nothing about what belongs in entered value. Freight and insurance to the first US port are generally deductible from a CIF price where they are separately identified; buried in a single number, they are not identifiable, and the safe treatment is the expensive one. This is also the element most likely to be reconstructed a year later when a CF-28 lands and someone asks how the declared value was arrived at.
A worked example
This is an illustrative example. The numbers and names are invented.
An invoice arrives from Pacific Rim Trading Ltd., Hong Kong, for a Chicago importer:
500 CTNS GLOVES — USD 18,500 CIF ORD — Terms: CIF
Against the list, that invoice is missing (3) a description that will classify — knit or coated, which fibre, what the cartons are marked; (4) a quantity in the units of the country of shipment, since cartons are not pairs; (8) any breakdown of the freight and insurance folded into the CIF figure; (10) origin, which Hong Kong as a shipping point does not establish; and (e) what is in each carton. It also names a trading company, so the manufacturer block — and the MID you have to build from it — is not on the document either.
Five things to request in one email, before the file is opened a second time.
What to send the client
Short, specific, and framed as what the entry needs rather than as a complaint:
We have your packet for [reference]. Before we can prepare the entry, the commercial invoice needs five things that US customs regulations require (19 CFR 141.86): the country of origin of the goods (manufacture, not shipping point); a description that identifies each item by name and grade, with the carton marks and numbers; the quantity in pieces as well as cartons; freight and insurance stated separately from the goods value; and what each carton contains. If the supplier cannot change their invoice, an attachment covering these points is acceptable — the regulation allows the information to be on the invoice or attached to it.
When there is no compliant invoice
Sometimes there is nothing to fix because there is nothing to fix it with. Two sections cover that. 141.85 prescribes the pro forma invoice, in substantially the form set out there, for use where no seller's or shipper's invoice is available. 141.91 allows entry without the required invoice only on conditions: CBP must be satisfied the failure to produce it is beyond the importer's control, the importer files a written declaration to that effect with whatever seller's or shipper's invoices exist or a pro forma, and what is filed must still be adequate for examination, estimated duties and statistics. A waiver under 141.92 carries its own price: a statement pointing out in exact detail every inaccuracy, omission or defect in the invoices you do have.
None of that is a shortcut. A pro forma is a promise that the data is right, made by the importer, on a document the importer produced. It moves where the exposure sits, not whether it exists. CBP's Reasonable Care publication is the reference worth keeping next to this section, because it is the standard the whole thing is judged against.
Running the list
Eleven elements plus nine lettered paragraphs is more than anyone checks consciously on every packet. What experienced writers do instead is check the five that go wrong — origin, description, quantity, itemized charges, per-package contents — and notice the rest by absence. That works, and it is worth writing down for whoever is new on the desk, because it is the difference between finding a gap at 10am and finding it at 4pm with the truck booked.