Bill International Duties to Payor of Shipping Charges

When shipping to another country, duties, and taxes may apply to your shipment. The shipment recipient is generally responsible for paying any duties or taxes. However, there may be instances where you, as the merchant, will want to cover the cost of duties and taxes.

When a merchant pays, it is called Delivered Duty Paid or DDP.

Within ShipStation, the setting you use for DDP is Bill Int’l Duties to Payor of Shipping Charges if your account language setting is set to English (US & CA). When it is set to a different language, the option is Delivered Duty Paid.

Illustration of woman at a retail checkout counter that says Delivery Duty Paid

There are a few things to know about DDP:

  • The merchant is responsible for all the costs associated with shipping.

  • Not all carriers provide this option, but many do.

  • You should explicitly convey to your customers that you mark up your prices to cover duties and other fees.

Why use DDP?

DDP is convenient for your customers because it removes the burden of paying another fee before receiving their shipment. They just have to wait for their shipment to arrive. It is especially appealing if the merchant absorbs all the costs.

Usually, the advantage for the merchant can come from having a steady, reliable market in a certain place. This will reduce risk if you know you can reliably send shipments to the destination country.

Create DDP Labels

In ShipStation, you can manually apply DDP to individual orders or create an automation rule that will automatically do it for you.

Manually Apply to Orders

  1. Select a supported carrier from the Service dropdown under Configure Shipment section.

    V3 order details that show the configure shipment section. Under service, FedEx International Ground is selected.

    This example shows FedEx International Ground as the selected service.

  2. Tick the box to Bill duties and taxes to Payor of shipping charges that now appears in the Other Shipping Options section.

    V3 Orders tab Sidebar, Other Shipping Options section, red outline around Bill duties and taxes to payor option

    Please note: If your account language setting is not set to English (US & CA), this option will read Delivered Duty Paid (DDP).

    Other shipping options DDP option highlighted

Automatically Apply to Orders

Bill Int’l Duties to Payor of Shipping Charges is one of the actions available for automation rules. You can set up your criteria based on the destination country, carrier, customer, or other necessary limits.

Example rule sets orders shipping outside the US to Bill International Duties to Payor of Shipping Charges.

This automation rule will enable the Bill Duties to Payor/Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) option for a shipment automatically when qualified orders import into ShipStation.

Carrier Support for DDP

The option to bill duties to the payor is only available when shipping with certain carriers. If a carrier supports DDP, the option to use it will appear in ShipStation in the CSW , under Label Options.

If you are using a carrier that supports DDP and do not see the option to select it in ShipStation, please let our support team know.

CSW
CSW