Creating a CAFTA-DR and other Free Trade Agreement Certificates of Origin (video)

The United States has Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Trade Promotion Agreements (TPAs) with 20 countries, which offer reduced tariffs between participating countries. The United States’ FTAs and TPAs build upon the foundation set out by the World Trade Organization of which the U.S. is a member.

Some FTAs are between the U.S. and just one nation, such as the Korea FTA. Other FTAs include several countries, such as the NAFTA, which includes the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The CAFTA-DR includes the U.S., Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
When shipping your goods to one of the FTA or TPA countries, it is sometimes required but always helpful to provide a document, such as a certificate of origin, showing that your goods qualify for the reduced tariffs offered by the FTAs and TPAs.

Shipping Solutions includes a Certificate of Origin for most of the United States’ Free Trade Agreements. Take a look at this short video to see how Shipping Solutions software makes it easy to complete a NAFTA Certificate of Origin in English, French or Spanish as well as Certificates of Origin for the Australia FTA, CAFTA-DR FTA, Chile FTA, Colombia TPA, and the Korea FTA. Since the video was made, we have also added certificates for the Panama TPA and Peru TPA.

This short video walks you through the steps you need to create these documents in less than three minutes and then print them out on plain paper, save them as PDF files, or email them to your customer.

Video Transcript

Shipping Solutions software is the easy, fast and accurate way to complete your export forms!

To create a NAFTA Certificate of Origin or other Free Trade Agreement form click the EZ Start tab. Click either the New button to create a new shipment or the Copy button to copy an existing shipment.

Click Contacts and fill in the Exporter by selecting it from your Shipping Solutions database. The certificates will display these fields (address fields and the tax ID number). You will probably want to enter other contacts on this screen, but they are not required for the NAFTA and other Free Trade Agreement forms. Save and close this screen.

Click the Product Detail screen. Enter the products in your shipment by selecting them from your Shipping Solutions database. The NAFTA and other Free Trade Agreement forms include these fields (Product Description, Schedule B code, Preference Criteria, Producer, Net Cost and the Country of Origin). In addition, the Korea free trade agreement form includes these fields (Product ID, Quantity and Sales Unit of Measure).

The great thing about Shipping Solutions is you’ve now entered about 75% of the information you need for most shipments. The contacts and product detail will appear on all the export documents, and you’ve only entered them one time.

Next, click the NAFTA/Other Free Trade Agreements screen. Enter the Importer and Producer by pulling the addresses from your Shipping Solutions database. The certificates will display these fields (the address fields and the tax ID number). The Certified by appears at the bottom of the certificates and displays these fields (the company name, contact name, contact title, phone number and fax number). In addition, the Australia and Korea free trade agreement forms also display the email address. Save and Close.

Fill in the certificate date plus a blanket date if this certificate covers multiple shipments of identical goods for a period of up to one year. Save and close this screen.

You did it! You have entered enough information to produce a free trade agreement certificate of origin.

Click Preview/Print/Email to see your document. In addition to the NAFTA in English, French and Spanish, we have the free trade agreement forms for Australia, CAFTA-DR (which is Central America and the Dominican Republic), Chile, Colombia and Korea. We can preview the forms, print them out on plain paper, print them to PDF, or email them to a customer or freight forwarder.

To learn more about Shipping Solutions, give us a call at (888) 890-7447 or visit our website! Thank you for watching!