If you have never shipped further than your family in Texas or your customer on the other side of the country, it may seem that shipping is pretty straight forward or even simple. But when you start thinking about shipping to one of the hundreds of countries outside of the US, things suddenly become potentially disastrously complex. Suddenly there are multiple governments and their respective laws, regulations and tariffs, people, languages and cultures to make something that should be simple shipping into a potential nightmarish headache.

For example, almost everyone has heard the term FOB, some actually know it means "Free On Board", but most people can't actually tell you what it means about shipping risk and costs. What would happen if this gets translated into the other country's language and they really don't define "On Board" the same way. How would you negotiate a shipping contract?

To avoid this nightmare the International Chamber of Commerce has developed a set of INternational COmmerce (INCO) terms that are defined and accepted globally. When you use the term FOB it means the same thing around the world, thus eliminating translation, cultural and other differences.

So you should definitely include the proper INCO term in all of your shipping documentation. Of course, "proper" is subject to negotiation, but that is one of the advantages of using INCO terms - since every INCO term is accepted worldwide you know exactly what each term means in terms of risk and costs, so you can clearly negotiate with your customer how you both agree to share the risks and costs of shipping.