A price agreed from a listing photo is the cost that comes back as rework, a second sample, or a freight bill the quote never named. To source products from China, and to buy products direct from China, name the product and the U.S. destination, then compare offers, match the company you pay, approve a sample, inspect the lot, and divide the charges by the units you accept. Keep that file with the other sourcing guides.
You buy products direct from China by contracting with the seller and taking the U.S. importer-of-record role yourself, or by designating a licensed customs broker in writing. CBP does not require an importer license or permit. Other agencies may require a permit for the commodity, and a state or local business license may also apply. 19 U.S.C. § 1484 says the importer of record uses reasonable care to file the entry and to complete it with the declared value, the classification, and the rate of duty. CBP’s importer tips add that this person stays responsible for the entry documents and the duties, taxes, and fees when a broker files. The consignor guide, quoting Customs Law Article 11, requires the consignor to file with customs before handling customs formalities. That consignor is a market entity on the guide’s list.
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| Step | Filed input | Dominant failure mode | Prevention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product and destination | Use, materials, market, open questions | A unit price agreed from a photo | Close the open questions before any ranking |
| Consignor | A market entity allowed to file the export | A domestic listing treated as an export shipment | Name the filer before the deposit |
| One specification | Same quantity, pack, rule, and place | Two A9/B9 cost lists ranked as one price | Hold the ranking while the rules differ |
| Counterparty | License, code, and bank name | A deposit posted to a second Chinese name | Hold payment until those three match |
| Sample | One physical unit tied to a version | Bulk built from a different material | Write which items have to stay the same |
| Balance | The document that releases it | The balance paid while the lot is still open | Name that document in the order |
| Inspection | A person at the goods, with the lot identified | A note that the goods look fine | Keep the balance until the record exists |
| Accepted units | Charges divided by units that ship | The stack divided by the ordered quantity | Use A = Q - R |
Buying direct makes you the importer of record
For goods entering the United States, CBP’s importer tips state that CBP does not require an importer to have a license or permit. Other agencies may require a permit, license, or other certification depending on the commodity, and CBP acts for those agencies in an administrative capacity. The same page says you may also need a license from local or state authorities to do business. The importer number on a CBP entry is your IRS business registration number, or your Social Security number if the business is not registered with the IRS or you have no business. You can instead complete CBP Form 5106 and present it to the Entry Branch at a port of entry for a CBP-assigned number.
19 U.S.C. § 1484(a) requires one of the parties who qualifies as importer of record, in person or by an agent authorized in writing, to use reasonable care. That party files the documents or electronic data CBP needs to decide whether the merchandise may be released, and completes the entry with the declared value, the classification, and the rate of duty. Paragraph (a)(2)(B) says the filing is made by the owner or purchaser, or, when the owner, purchaser, or consignee designates one, by a person holding a valid customs-broker license under section 1641. The importer of record must be one of the parties eligible to file. CBP’s tips say many first-time importers consult a licensed broker, and that importers bringing merchandise in for their own use may make entry on their own. Brokers are licensed by CBP and are not CBP employees. With or without a broker, the importer of record remains responsible for the entry documents and for the duties, taxes, and fees.
Ocean freight adds a filing the air and courier modes on this page do not. CBP’s tips say that before merchandise arriving by vessel can be imported, the Importer Security Filing importer, or their agent, must electronically submit advance cargo information. The requirement applies to cargo arriving by ocean vessel. It does not apply to other modes. Failure to comply can result in monetary penalties, increased inspections, and delay of cargo. This page does not list the data elements. Use CBP’s Importer Security Filing page for those fields.
The duty line is not a number this page can print. CBP’s duty-rate page says the Harmonized Tariff System provides duty rates for virtually every item, that an approximate figure is only as good as the information you provide, and that CBP makes the final determination of the correct rate, not the importer. A binding ruling is available for a specific item. Leave the duty cell blank until the classification is one you can show. Do not copy a rate from a factory invoice.
Name the consignor before the deposit
Rule of thumb. If filed consignors for the named exporter stay under 1, hold the deposit. Customs Law Article 11, as quoted in the consignor-filing guide, requires the consignor or consignee of import and export goods, and a customs broker, to file with customs before handling customs formalities.
The same guide quotes Customs Order No. 253, Article 4. The applicant needs market-entity status. A consignor also needs a foreign-trade operator filing unless another rule applies. The guide’s acceptance list limits consignors to companies and other enterprise legal persons, sole proprietorships, partnerships, farmer cooperatives, individual industrial and commercial households, branches of foreign companies, and other market entities named in law. A branch files only after the parent consignor has filed, and only for the branch types the guide lists. A buyer sitting outside China is not on that list. Buying direct leaves you as the U.S. importer. It does not put your name on the Chinese export declaration.
The guide states that the filing fee is zero, that the time limit is 3 working days, and that the filing is long-term. It also states that the record is published on the China Customs enterprise import-export credit information platform. This check did not open that platform, so this page does not describe its screens. The guide is the source for what gets published. A filing shows that the entity is recorded as a declarant. It does not show which workshop will make the goods.
If the seller trades only on a domestic platform, use the 1688 buying guide for account access, who can pay, and the handoff from China receiving to export. Ask that seller for the Chinese name of the market entity that will file. If they cannot name one, the offer is still a domestic sale.
Write the product before you rank a price
The specification is the product. Record the user and the use, the materials and the dimensions you can measure, the destination country and the sales channel, the order quantity and the reorder you expect, the unit pack and the carton limits, the labels, and the tests or declarations the destination requires. If a field is unknown, mark it as a question every candidate has to answer.
A photograph does not state steel grade, wall thickness, cell type, coating, carton strength, or the version of a label. Regulated goods need the destination requirement identified before a final price, because the importer of record is the party § 1484 charges with reasonable care on classification and on whether other legal requirements are met.
The charges that sit outside the factory unit price are tooling, inspection, origin handling, freight, insurance, the duty CBP assesses from the classification, destination charges, and warehouse or marketplace prep. Skipping the written spec moves the order into rework, another sample, relabeling, and a freight figure drawn again once the cartons are real. Those are the hidden lines. This page does not price them.
Rank offers on one Incoterms rule
Rule of thumb. If unmatched Incoterms rules exceed 0, stop ranking unit prices. Count an offer as unmatched when its three-letter rule, or the place named with that rule, differs from the offer you are holding it against.
The ICC describes Incoterms 2020 as eleven three-letter trade terms for business-to-business contracts for the sale and purchase of goods, updated in 2020 from terms in use since 1936. The ICC’s 2020 page says the rules allocate cost, risk, and obligations, and that all costs for a given rule appear in article A9/B9 of that rule so the full list can be read in one place. Two offers on different rules are two cost lists. A lower unit price on a shorter list has left work somewhere else.
Copy the same quantity breaks, packaging, sample terms, tooling, lead time, payment trigger, validity, Incoterms rule, and named place into the wholesale RFQ template. A blank packaging line or a blank rule is unresolved. Do not average it into a ranking.
Match the license, the code, and the bank name
Before any deposit, match the Chinese legal name and the unified social credit code on the business license to the contract seller, the invoice issuer, and the bank beneficiary. Use how to verify a Chinese supplier for that license, code, and bank-name check. This page does not describe the registry screen.
A trader is a normal counterparty when the trader is the party you pay and the party on the license. An undisclosed second name is the failure mode. The workshop, the machines, and the subcontracted steps are a later check. The registry record does not list them.
Approve the sample against the written spec
Approve the sample against the specification, and record the measurements, materials, color, artwork or firmware version, packaging, and the date. Keep one reference with you and, where the inspector will use it, one with the inspector.
One approved unit shows that this seller made one unit to that version. It does not show the capacity of the bulk lot. Before production starts, write which materials, molds, components, and subcontractors the lot will use, and which of those have to match the sample.
Release the balance on a named record
The deposit can start production only after the consignor is named and the bank name matches the license. The balance waits on a record you named in the order. Write what starts production, what counts as the approved sample, how the completion date is measured, what the inspection record must contain, what happens if that record fails, and which documents have to exist before the goods move.
Pay the beneficiary whose Chinese name you already matched. A new account image on the same email thread is a new name. Run it through the same license, code, and bank-name check before the money moves.
Inspect the lot while you can still hold it
Someone has to be with the goods before the balance or the shipping release leaves your control. The record identifies the lot, states what was checked, and states the result. A comment that the goods look fine is not that record. This page does not set a sample size. Use pre-shipment inspection in China for the timing and the evidence to keep before the balance moves. If the lot fails the agreed points, agree the rework and the next record before you release it.
Divide the charge stack by accepted units
The commercial result is the cost of one accepted, compliant unit at the destination, not the factory unit price. Let C be the stack of goods, tooling, inspection, origin charges, freight, insurance, the duty and tax from the classification CBP assesses, destination charges, and destination prep. Let Q be the units ordered, R the units rejected and not shipped, and A the units accepted and shipped.
A = Q - R
U = C / A
Worked example. Use these counts only as inputs, not as a defect rate and not as an inspection sample size. Q = 1000, R = 200, so A = 800. Then U = C / 800. Dividing the same C by the ordered quantity produces C / 1000. U divided by that figure equals 1000 / 800 = 1.25, because 800 × 1.25 = 1000. The accepted-unit cost is 1.25 times the figure you get by spreading C across every ordered unit. C stays a symbol until each line is a quote or an assessment you can file. The duty line inside C comes from the CBP assessment for your product’s HTSUS classification.
Separate overlapping quote lines with the landed-cost calculation. When you have a confirmed customs value and a duty figure from the classification, enter those lines in the landed-cost calculator. Do not type a rate you have not classified.
Which of the eight steps you can run from abroad
Most of the file work is email, a video call, and a courier. The steps that need a person in China are the ones where goods, a domestic payment, or a packed lot have to be handled locally.
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| Step | From abroad | A person in China |
|---|---|---|
| Product and destination | You own the specification | An agent can mark a missing field. The decision stays with you |
| Channel and consignor | Export marketplaces, fairs, referrals | Domestic sellers who work only in Chinese, or who will not name the filer |
| One specification | You issue the same fields to every candidate | Replies skip fields or never arrive in English |
| License, code, and bank name | The desk check in the verification guide | A workshop visit before the deposit |
| Sample | Each supplier ships one unit to you | Several suppliers’ samples have to be compared in one place |
| Payment | The seller accepts a foreign payment to the matched name | The seller accepts only a domestic payment |
| Inspection | You cannot stand at the cartons | Always. The balance waits on that visit |
| Landed cost | You compare the stack and choose the mode | Cartons from several sellers have to be consolidated |
You can hire an inspection service for the lot and keep the rest of the file. A China sourcing agent is the broader split when several of the right-hand cells apply to the same order. You still approve the specification, the sample, the budget, and the accept-or-reject decision.
When these U.S. entry rules do not apply
The CBP sections on this page are for merchandise entered into the United States. A purchase that never arrives in the United States is outside § 1484, the importer-number rules, and the vessel Importer Security Filing. If the goods still leave China, the consignor-filing guide still governs the export declaration. A commodity another U.S. agency regulates needs that agency’s permit even though CBP itself does not require an importer license. This page does not list those commodities.
What the order file has to answer
Before you authorize production, the file should answer five questions:
- Which legal entity receives the money, and does that Chinese name match the license?
- Which document defines the product?
- Which physical sample was approved, and on what date?
- Which record releases the balance?
- Who files the Chinese export, and who is the U.S. importer of record?
If one answer is missing, the order is early. File the note with the other China sourcing guides.
Method and sources
Checked on 18 October 2026. Importer licensing, the importer number, broker status, importer-of-record responsibility, and the vessel-only Importer Security Filing are CBP’s Tips for New Importers and Exporters, last modified 27 August 2024 on that page. The reasonable-care filing, the declared value, classification, and rate of duty, and who may be importer of record are 19 U.S.C. § 1484(a) and (a)(2)(B) in the 2023 edition on govinfo. Duty rates coming from the Harmonized Tariff System, the limit of an approximate lookup, and CBP’s final determination are CBP’s Determining Duty Rates page, last modified 25 November 2024. The eleven terms, the allocation of cost, risk, and obligations, and article A9/B9 are the ICC Incoterms 2020 page. Consignor conditions, the zero fee, the 3-working-day limit, the long-term validity, and publication of the filing are the General Administration of Customs consignor-filing guide, including its quotations of Customs Law Article 11 and Order No. 253, Article 4. The library search returned no primary text of these instruments. No new search-results page was purchased. This page does not describe a registry screen or the customs credit platform.
Sources
- Tips for New Importers and Exporters : U.S. Customs and Border Protection Accessed October 18, 2026.
- 19 U.S.C. § 1484, Entry of merchandise (2023 edition) : U.S. Government Publishing Office Accessed October 18, 2026.
- Determining Duty Rates : U.S. Customs and Border Protection Accessed October 18, 2026.
- Incoterms 2020 : International Chamber of Commerce Accessed October 18, 2026.
- 进出口货物收发货人备案办事指南 : General Administration of Customs Accessed October 18, 2026.
