Good afternoon,
The following is a problem which faces anyone shipping food, supplements, or medicines/drugs to the USA.
When you do so, it is necessary to complete an FDA Prior Notice before the arrival of the shipment and send this to the carrier for customs clearance.
The FDA Prior Notice form can only be completed AFTER you have a Tracking ID (and hence AFTER the creation of a label in Shipstation).
The FDA Prior Notice form therefore cannot be attached to the shipment's customs forms, as these are generated electronically in Ship station, and cannot be altered after the courier Tracking number is generated. And of course a Tracking number is needed to complete the FDA Prior Notice in the first place.
So in terms of attaching the FDA Prior Notice confirmation number (or form), it's a 'chicken-and-egg' type situation. I would appreciate I would appreciate a function which allows transmittal of a customs form to the carrier’s customs clearance team, after the generation of the label, ideally via the ability to append an additional page / form to the electronic customs documents after the label generation.
We are facing continual delays at customs because there is not a clean way of getting the documents to the Fed Ex clearance team. They are forwarded via Swap Global at present, and this process is extremely unreliable and inefficient.
Regards
Gabriel
Manapura COO