The export price list. A price without an Incoterm isn't a price.

The price list is the first document a foreign buyer compares with someone else's. And the comparison is almost always lost by the seller who wrote the lowest number without saying what it covers.

This piece is part of the guide to export operations for small food producers and covers the fourth step, the point where the negotiation takes on numbers.

The template, to download

A price without an Incoterm and a place can't be compared, and the buyer chooses the price they can compare. The sheet asks for the costs you already know, once, and from them works out EXW, FCA, FOB, DAP and DDP for each product.

File	Contents	Link
Export price listExcel, three sheets	The standard shipment the costs are spread across, the price list with the five quotes per product, and a sheet explaining what each term means.	listino-export-foglio-en.xlsx

The files are free. There's no form in the way, we don't ask for an email address, and we don't get notified when anyone downloads them. The sheet adds up what you put in it: it doesn't know the destination country's duties and doesn't guess them, and the tax side is deliberately left out.

Why the Italian price list doesn't hold up abroad

The domestic price list works in Italy because everyone shares its unstated assumptions. Anyone reading it already knows who pays for transport, which VAT applies, what normal payment times are in the sector, and which formats exist on the market.

Abroad, none of those assumptions survives. The foreign buyer doesn't know them and won't ask: they'll make their own assumptions, and they'll make them in their own favour. Then they'll compare the result with a competing offer built explicitly, and yours will look sketchy even when the product is better.

The buyer doesn't choose the lowest price. They choose the price they can compare.

The Incoterms you actually need

Incoterms are the delivery terms codified by the International Chamber of Commerce. In the 2020 version, in force since 1 January 2020, there are eleven. In practice, a small food producer comes across five.

Here the term is used to build the price. The practical question that comes straight after, meaning who pays for transport, who handles export clearance, who handles import clearance and who pays the duties, has a single table per term in Incoterms: who pays for what.

Term	Where your part ends	When it makes sense
EXWEx Works	Goods made available at your premises. Loading, transport, export customs and risk pass to the buyer.	When the buyer already has its own freight forwarder in Italy. Convenient on the face of it, with the two consequences described below.
FCAFree Carrier	Delivery to the carrier named by the buyer, at the agreed place. The export formalities stay with you.	When you want to keep control of the exit paperwork without taking on the international transport.
FOBFree On Board	Goods loaded on board the ship at the agreed port of shipment.	Designed for sea freight, and still the term many non-EU buyers ask for out of habit.
DAPDelivered At Place	Goods delivered to the destination, ready for unloading. Import clearance stays with the buyer.	When you want to quote a delivered price without taking on the destination country's duties and taxes.
DDPDelivered Duty Paid	All-inclusive to the customer's door, import duties and taxes included.	Best avoided until you know the destination country's costs precisely. It's the term that exposes the seller most.

The term alone is never enough: it always needs the place alongside it. FCA written without saying where delivery happens leaves open exactly the question the Incoterm was meant to settle.

EXW looks like the easy option

Almost every small producer quotes EXW for their first export, and the reason is understandable: the goods leave through the gate and become someone else's problem. But there are two consequences, and it's worth knowing them before you choose.

The first is about comparison. An EXW price is the lowest you can show, and precisely for that reason it's the hardest to compare: the buyer has to add transport, paperwork and risk to work out what they're really paying you. If a competitor quotes delivered, your lower number can end up, once everything's added, higher.

The second is about the exit paperwork. With EXW, the export customs formalities are in the hands of the buyer or their freight forwarder, while you may need the documents showing that the goods have left the EU. Getting that document from someone who has no interest in providing it is a real practical difficulty.

The body that publishes the rules has taken a position on this. ICC Academy writes that EXW “is most suitable for domestic trade”, and that sellers are “strongly encouraged to consider using FCA instead of EXW where the goods are crossing a border”. Put simply: EXW was designed for domestic trade, and FCA is the term that changes little in commercial practice, since the goods still leave from your yard, while leaving you in the position of exporter.

The minimum order, worked out from the pallet

The minimum order is almost always chosen as a round number, and almost always defended badly, because the person who chose it can't explain where it comes from. The right question is a different one: below what quantity does shipping cost out of proportion to the value of the goods?

You find that point by looking at how the product actually stacks.

• Units per carton, and the weight of a full carton.
• Cartons per layer, and layers per pallet.
• How many pallets fit in the transport unit your buyer will use.

A minimum in line with a pallet or half a pallet has a physical reason the buyer recognises immediately, because it's the same logic their warehouse works by. A minimum picked on instinct comes across as a commercial barrier, and in negotiation it gets attacked as one. The same palletisation details are needed in the spec sheet in English, where they're among the fields most often forgotten.

What the price list should contain

Six things. If one is missing, the document can't be compared and will set off a round of emails to clarify what could have been written down.

• The delivery terms with the place, for example FCA followed by the name of the premises or the carrier.
• The currency, stated explicitly even when it seems obvious.
• Format, units per carton and weight, because the buyer needs to work out the cost per unit sold, not just per carton.
• The minimum order, given per product and per shipment, which are two different things.
• Validity, with an expiry date. A price list with no expiry comes back eight months later with your costs from back then.
• Payment terms, including any advance payment on the first order, which with a new buyer is a normal and accepted request.

Even so, the price list shouldn't go out in your first reply to a vague enquiry: three questions come first, and that's the subject of how to reply to an email from a foreign importer. The full sum of what it costs to get this far is in what a first export order really costs.

When there are five price lists

With one market and two products, you can keep the price list up to date in your head. The problem comes when there's one price list for Europe, one for the United States, one for a private label, each with its own currency and delivery term.

From then on, the risk shifts from getting a price wrong to sending the old version. It always happens the same way, by grabbing the attachment from the last email instead of from the right folder, and the buyer doesn't notice until they place the order.

That's the point where the approved version needs to live in one place, with a visible date, and go out from there to anyone who asks for it. It's the job done by the system for commercial texts and materials, with the rule set out in Ethics: documents are prepared automatically, but the version that reaches a buyer is confirmed by a person.

Questions and answers