In addition to having to provide the necessary sender and recipient data for each shipment, couriers require customers to provide an accurate description of the contents of their shipments.
What is the content/goods description and why is it required?
Since any shipment may need to be inspected at checkpoints, for safety and security, the goods must have an accurate and consistent description.
❗️Insufficient or inaccurate descriptions can lead to delays at customs by failing to pass security or customs controls and, therefore, to customer dissatisfaction due to a delay in transit or by shipments being held up or returned ❗️
Content description requirements:
👉 Content descriptions must be in English and should be as detailed as possible:
With clear specific information and providing sufficient detail on the exact nature of the goods in plain language, it should not be vague.
Stating what the goods are, what they are used for and what they are made of.
🚫 Insufficient/vague description: "Accessory" (general and can mean many different things)
✅ Clear description: "Skateboard wooden decks" or "Women cotton underwear" or "Hexagonal aluminum bicycle nuts".
How to add content descriptions?
You can add these descriptions using Tags in an automated way from your CMS, so that your descriptions can be as precise as possible (in case you sell a diverse selection of products).
Or you can also add them in Outvio, there are 2 ways:
by default for all orders (recommended for when you sell very similar products)
manually in Outvio (if you usually create your orders manually in Outvio).
➡️ To add it manually, clic on the shipment from the Orders tab and click on the pencil to add the most suitable description for the products in each shipment.
➡️ To add it in Outvio by default, go to the Integrations section:
➡️ Click on the CMS integration you use and go to the "Miscellaneous Settings" step.
➡️ Fill in the field with an appropriate description of the content of your store following the rules previously mentioned, and you're done!
👉 This description will be applied automatically to all shipments coming from this CMS, and this will save you the time of having to enter it manually for each shipment.
Find more information about the requirements for your shipments Here