UPS: Digitally transmitting commercial invoices and customs documents to UPS via Carrier Connect

Your options at a glance

1. Uploading customs documents as a file via “Trade Document Upload”

If you no longer want to print out your customs documents and attach them to your package, you can upload your documents as a file to Carrier Connect using the “Trade Document Upload” value-added service. Please coordinate this with your UPS contact in advance.

2. Transmitting commercial invoice data via “Paperless Invoice”

UPS Paperless® digitally transmits commercial invoice data to UPS and customs offices. UPS gets the information for the commercial invoice directly from the transmitted shipment data. Paperless Invoice replaces the paper form or upload of the commercial invoice document – but requires that you have entered all invoice-relevant shipment data in Carrier Connect.

• To use this service, you must first register with UPS using your UPS ID at www.ups.com. For details, see UPS services rate table, p. 25.

• Start using the paperless commercial invoice as soon as possible. The cost of processing commercial invoices in paper form has increased, potentially leading to longer processing times. UPS has announced that from April 2024 it will charge a surcharge of USD 1.00 for paper-based commercial invoices. This fee was increased to USD 3.00 at the beginning of July 2024 and to USD 5.00 at the beginning of October 2024.

How to digitally transmit commercial invoices and customs documents to UPS

Here you can find out how to upload your customs documents to the Carrier Connect application via the Carrier Connect user interface or how to transmit your commercial invoice data. You can find out how to transmit the data from your host system via the API in the API documentation.

Prerequisite for using Paperless Invoice: Access data for the “Paperless document upload” web service

The “Paperless document upload” ensures that the documents are transferred to UPS when a shipping order is completed.

1. Ask your UPS technical contact to enable the "Authorization (OAuth)" and "Paperless document upload" web services.
2. You can generate your credentials (Client ID, Client Secret) via the “UPS Developer Portal” (see migration guide in the section “Generating new credentials”).
3. Enter the credentials in the account in the relevant UPS carrier configuration under Web service parameters – Operating mode "Test" or "Prod" – Client ID and Password. The credentials for the test and production systems are identical.

Step 1: Initially enabling value-added services

• To be able to use the value-added services in the shipping order, you must first enable the value-added services. For details on the meaning of value-added services, see "Step 3: Selecting value-added service(s) in the shipping order”.

Go the Master data – Carrier configurations, select and open the relevant “UPS” carrier (EMEA, Asia, CA, or US) and on the Value-added services sheet, enable the following entries:

• Trade document upload
• Paperless invoice
• Paperless invoice (additional documents)

Step 2: Adding extra fields (only relevant for “Paperless Invoice”)

• Extra fields are only necessary if you transmit the commercial invoice data via “Paperless Invoice”, i.e. if you use the value-added services Paperless Invoice and Paperless Invoice (add. doc.).

• To be able to use the extra fields in the shipping order, you must first add them. For details on the meaning of extra fields, see "Step 4: Filling in extra field(s) in the shipping order”.

Go the Master data – Carrier configurations, select and open the relevant “UPS” carrier (EMEA, Asia, CA, or US) and on the Extra fields sheet, add the following entries:

Step 3: Selecting value-added service(s) in the shipping order

Case a: Only transmit commercial invoice data
Enable the “Paperless Invoice” value-added service.

Case b: Transmit commercial invoice data and upload other customs documents at the same time
Enable “Paperless Invoice (add. doc.)” and the “Trade document upload” value-added services. The commercial invoice must not/cannot be uploaded as an additional file.

Case c: Transmit commercial invoice data and attach other customs documents in paper form to the package
Enable the “Paperless Invoice (add. doc)” value-added service.

Case d: Transmit commercial invoice data, upload other customs documents as a file, and at the same time attach other customs documents in paper form to the package
Enable the “Paperless Invoice (add. doc.)” and “Trade document upload” value-added services.

Case e: Upload only commercial invoice document
Enable the “Trade document upload” value-added service.

Case f: Upload commercial invoice document and other customs documents at the same time
Enable the “Trade document upload” value-added service.

Case g: Only upload other customs documents, but no commercial invoice document
If you only upload other customs documents, such as certificates of origin, export accompanying documents, packing lists, or the like, enable the “Trade document upload” value-added service.

• You can combine the document upload with the "World Ease" value-added services.

Step 4: Filling in extra field(s) in the shipping order

• The extra fields are only necessary if you transmit the commercial invoice data via “Paperless Invoice”, i.e. if you use the value-added services Paperless Invoice and Paperless Invoice (add. doc.).

Fill in at least one of the two extra fields:

• Invoice Additional Comments
• Invoice Declaration Statement

Optionally populate the following extra fields if you explicitly show these additional costs on your (pro forma) invoice:

• Discount
• Freight costs
• Insurance costs
• Other costs

• You can find instructions on how to create your commercial invoice at Commercial-Invoice-Guide.pdf (ups.com).

Step 5 (optional): Uploading document(s) to Carrier Connect

• The documents must be uploaded to Carrier Connect before the shipping order is completed. You can do this via the Carrier Connect user interface using the Print labelsbutton.

1. On the Documents sheet of the shipping order, click Add attachment or Drag & Drop to select your document(s).
   • File size per file: max. 10 MB, per shipping order: max. 50 MB
   • Allowed formats: bmp, doc, gif, jpg, pdf, png, rtf, tif, txt, xls, docx, xlsx
   • Number of files: max. 13 files/shipping order, max. 13 documents/file
2. It is mandatory that you add one of the following texts in exactly this notation in the Comment field:
   • COMMERCIAL_INVOICE
   • CERTIFICATE_OF_ORIGIN
   • EXPORT_ACCOMPANYING_DOCUMENT
   • PACKING_LIST
   • OTHER