FedEx: Transmitting customs documents with "Electronic Trade Documents" (ETD) via Carrier Connect

Getting to know "Electronic Trade Documents" (ETD)

With the "FedEx Electronic Trade Documents" (ETD) value-added service, you transmit the customs documents for your international shipments electronically and therefore no longer need to print them out and attach them to the shipment. For more information, please visit the FedEx website.

• Not all origin or destination countries accept ETD shipments. You will receive a corresponding hint through Carrier Connect when generating the label. In this case, disable the value-added service and attach the printed customs documents to your shipment as before.

How to enable the value-added service in the carrier configuration

Go the Master data – Carrier configurations, select and open the relevant "FedEx" carrier (EMEA, Asia, or US) and on the Value-added services sheet, enable the "Electronic Trade Documents (ETD) – Upload documents" entry.

How to submit the documents to FedEx

Learn how to upload customs documents to Carrier Connect through the Carrier Connect user interface and then transmit them to FedEx during label creation.

• You can find out how to transfer the data from your host system via the API in the API documentation.

Step 1: Selecting "Electronic Trade Documents (ETD) – Upload documents"

To upload documents, first select the additional service "Electronic Trade Documents (ETD) – Upload Documents" in the shipping order.

Step 2: Uploading customs document(s) to Carrier Connect

On the Documents sheet of the shipping order, click Add attachment or Drag & Drop to select your document(s).

• – File size per file: max. 1 MB
  – Allowed formats: PDF, TXT, PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, TIF, RTF, DOC, XLS, DOCX, XLSX
  – Number of files: unlimited 

It is mandatory that you add one of the following texts in exactly this notation in the Comment field:

• COMMERCIAL_INVOICE
• PRO_FORMA_INVOICE
• CERTIFICATE_OF_ORIGIN
• NAFTA_CERTIFICATE_OF_ORIGIN
• OTHER

Step 3: Printing labels and transmitting customs document(s) to FedEx

• You configure the so-called single package handling under Carrier configurations – Accounts – Single pkg. handling field group: Option is enabled or not.

• Label printing without enabled single package handling
  • If you do not print the labels individually package by package, but all labels of the shipping order together, then upload all documents to Carrier Connect before label printing (see step 2).
  • When the label is printed, the shipping order is also completed and the documents are submitted to FedEx.
  • Cancellation is not possible. However, you can correct the shipping order (Shipping order – Shipping order menu – Correct) and upload the documents again. If you have already completed the pickup and thus also sent the EDI, no more changes are possible.
• Label printing with enabled single package handling
  • If you print the labels individually package by package, then upload the documents to Carrier Connect before completion of the shipping order (see step 2).
  • The documents are not submitted to FedEx during the label printing of each package, but only when the shipping order is completed.