MID codes or Manufacturers Identification codes are used when shipping to the US as an alternative to the full name and address of a manufacturer. MID codes can be added to commercial documents generated by Shiptheory.
How to Generate a MID code for your product
To generate a Manufacturers Identification code, you need to make sure you have your manufacturers full business name and postal address.
Once you have all those details, you need to put together the MID code in the following order:
- Find the two-letter ISO code for your supplier's country e.g. GB for the United Kingdom, NL for the Netherlands and DE for Germany
- Take the first three letters of the manufacturer's first and second name (if applicable)
- Take the highest digits (up to four) from the address line
- Take the first three letters of the manufacturer's city name
For Example:
Company
15, Road Name
Bristol
United Kingdom
BS4 3EH
Becomes: GBCOM15BRI
Adding a MID code to a product
MID codes vary product to product and therefore in order for them to use them on your commercial invoices you must have a MID code attributed to the product your are shipping. In Shiptheory you can do this by editing a product in your product catalogue or by using the Shiptheory API.
Using the MID code on customs documentation
In order for MID codes to appear on your customs documentation you should enable the Append MID code in commodity description? setting in your customs documentation advanced settings.
When this is turned on Shiptheory will automatically append the MID code the commodity description of your products (if the MID code is available) on all Shiptheory generated commercial documentation.
Carrier specific MID code behaviour
- FedEx: When using 'Electronic Trade Documentation', Shiptheory will automatically append any available MID codes to the commodity description of the relevant product in spite of the user's settings in their customs documentation settings