Sending importer details for international Royal Mail and Parcelforce orders

This guide explains which importer details StoreFeeder sends to Royal Mail and Parcelforce on international orders, and the one field you may need to fill in, in the current StoreFeeder view. If you use the legacy view, see Sending importer details for international Royal Mail and Parcelforce orders (legacy).

What is commercial export?

Royal Mail have introduced commercial export, which means they now need to know who is receiving your goods in the destination country. That party is called the importer.

StoreFeeder sends importer details automatically whenever an order crosses a customs border on a Royal Mail or Parcelforce service. For most orders you don't need to do anything. If you send business-to-business orders to the EU, there is one field you'll need to fill in.

Which orders this affects

Importer details are sent on orders that leave the country your warehouse is in and are despatched on a Royal Mail or Parcelforce service. Commercial export applies in particular to:

Royal Mail High Value Despatch (HVD)
Parcelforce Delivered Taxes Paid services: ERA, ER1 and ER2

Your UK domestic orders are not affected at all, and neither are your other couriers. Nothing changes on your labels, CN paperwork or manifests.

Note: Orders to Jersey, Guernsey and Northern Ireland do count as crossing a customs border, even though they're treated as domestic for pricing. You'll see importer details being sent on these orders.

What StoreFeeder sends for you

StoreFeeder uses the person or company you're delivering to as the importer, which is what Royal Mail expect. The importer name, address, postcode, country, phone number and email address are all taken from the delivery address on the order, so as long as that address is complete there is nothing for you to do.

StoreFeeder doesn't pass on placeholder contact details. If the delivery phone number or email address on the order is "n/a", "n a", "n\a" or a single dash, it's treated as blank and left out, because a carrier will reject a placeholder as an invalid phone number or address.

Royal Mail need at least one way of contacting the importer, so every commercial export order needs either a real phone number or a real email address. If both are placeholders, the order won't despatch.

Business-to-business orders to the EU need a recipient EORI

This is the one thing you may need to act on. If an order is marked as a business order and is going to the EU on a commercial export service, Royal Mail require the recipient's EORI number. Without it, the order won't despatch.

In the current view, enter the EORI number on the order. The customer record in the current view has no EORI field, so you can't save it against the customer here. (Saving it against the customer is only possible in the legacy view.)

Go to Orders and click the order number.
In the Recipient section, enter the number in EORI.
Click Save at the top right, then despatch as normal.

The Recipient section of an order in the current view, with the VAT number, EORI and PID fields and the EORI field highlighted

An order counts as a business order when the Business toggle is on in the order's Order details section.

The three recipient customs fields

On the order page, these fields are in the Recipient section.

Field	What it is for	Fills in from
VAT number	The receiving business's VAT number. Sent to the carrier as the importer VAT number.	The VAT number on the customer's record.
EORI	The receiving business's EORI number. Required by Royal Mail for business-to-business commercial shipments to the EU.	Nothing in the current view: the customer record has no EORI field. Enter this per order.
PID	A personal or national identification number, used by destinations that ask for one instead of a VAT registration, for example a Brazilian CPF or a Turkish TCKN.	Nothing. Enter this per order.

Once an order has been despatched

After an order has been despatched or manifested, its importer details have already been sent to the carrier. Changing them in StoreFeeder at that point won't reach the carrier.

Messages you might see when despatching

If the carrier rejects an order, StoreFeeder tells you exactly what is missing instead of showing a general error. The most common messages are below.

Message	What to do
"Recipient EORI number is required for business to business commercial shipments to the EU"	Add the recipient's EORI number to the order (Recipient section, EORI).
"Importer details are required for business to business commercial shipments to the EU"	Check the delivery address is complete. A missing country will stop the details being sent.
"Importer phone number or email address is required"	The order has neither a phone number nor an email address. Add one of them. Remember that a placeholder such as "n/a" or a dash counts as blank, because StoreFeeder doesn't send it.
"Importer business name, address line 1, city, postcode or country is missing"	Complete the missing part of the delivery address and save the order.
"The business to business setting is not allowed for the delivery term this order resolves to. IOSS is only allowed on business to consumer orders, and delivery duty paid only on business to business orders"	IOSS can't be used on a business order. Use a service that is not IOSS.
"IOSS number is required for the delivery term this order resolves to"	Add your IOSS number to the order (Seller section, IOSS).
"Service destination doesn't support IOSS delivery duty paid shipments"	See Error Message: Service Destination doesn't support IOSS shipments.
"Duty costs are required for the delivery term this order resolves to"	Enter the duty amount in the order's Seller section, Duty paid value.

Still stuck? Contact StoreFeeder support with your account name, the order number, the Royal Mail or Parcelforce service on the order, the destination country, and the exact message shown when the despatch failed.