Get your freight forwarder on the ground floor of your import operations and you’ll be amazed at how much time and money you’ll save, not to mention how many headaches you can avoid.

Here are six things we bet you didn’t know your international logistics provider could do for you:

1. Monitor vendor performance – Technology enables you to maintain accurate and accessible records of your vendors and business partners. Using a dashboard application that tracks all imports and exports, orders, shipping times, and other critical metrics, cutting-edge logistics providers like Transmodal Corporation provide next-generation visibility that puts all shipping data in one place on one user-friendly interface. With this information, you will be able to compare vendor performance and make the best possible procurement decisions.

2. Import and Export Compliance: Over the last decade, literally every corner of the transportation industry has been affected by increased regulation and oversight. Your freight forwarder works in the trenches day in and day out and is well-equipped to help you navigate new laws and ensure your business and shipments are compliant. Both importers and exporters can take advantage of this valuable resource and avoid the heavy penalties and fines associated with non-compliance. Civil and criminal export penalties are currently capped at $1 million (there are no limits on import penalties), but will increase to a maximum of $10 million (or 10 times the value of the export) when the new law is passed. Export Administration Law. Exporters like Silicon Graphics, Inc. (which was fined $1.18 million for illegally exporting high-performance computers to a Russian nuclear lab) and Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation (which received a $210.00 civil penalty for a similar violation) They learned the hard way. Keep your company’s nose clean by working with your freight forwarder to stay on the right side of the law.

3. Provide “pay as you go” insurance: Maybe you don’t need an annualized insurance policy that covers the 20 percent of your business that ships globally, or maybe you only import products during certain times of the year. Whatever the challenge, your international logistics provider can help by providing pay-as-you-go air or sea cargo insurance. This can help fill in the gaps left by another policy or your self-insurance strategy and give you peace of mind with little extra effort. Your international logistics provider will also tell you what your policy does and does not cover. Let’s say you just bought $500,000 worth of consumer electronics with the intention of selling the products for $2 million. Unfortunately, the computers were damaged during shipping and cannot be sold, leaving his company with $1 million in lost profits (if replacement costs were covered by his policy). If you’re insured for product replacement and associated fees, you’ll get $500,000, plus $75,000 reimbursement for duties paid and $50,000 for freight and storage charges. That leaves you with $625,000, compared to $1.5 million if you could have sold the computers. Avoid this problem by knowing in advance what your insurance policy does and does not cover, and by filling in the gaps with a pay-as-you-go policy from your international logistics provider.

4. Help with duty refunds: When your shipment arrives in the US soaked and damaged beyond repair, you not only lose your original product costs, sales value, export duties and freight fees , but you also lose the import duties you paid to bring it into the country. Your freight forwarder can help you with the latter by requesting a duty refund and helping you recover your costs. You will need to prove that the shipment is not salvageable and that you will not be able to use it as intended to get your money back. If your merchandise is exported, companies like Transmodal Corporation can help you apply for a duty drawback, which is a refund of customs duties and fees paid on imported merchandise that is re-exported from the US or destroyed by customs . Statistics show that several billion dollars in refund claims go uncollected each year, even though claimants are entitled to a 99 percent refund of any applicable duties, fees, or taxes paid. Don’t leave this money on the table.

5. Rate engineering and duty minimization: Involve your customs broker in your shipping activities from the beginning and you can tap into their vast bank of material classification knowledge. These classifications dictate the amount of duties that are levied on shipments and are often left pending until the shipment reaches the US, for example) you may be able to significantly reduce your duties and increase your business bottom line. Your broker may be able to minimize paying duties in other creative (and legal) ways, such as using free trade agreement recommendations, US content reporting, or using trade zones Exterior.

6. Ensure social responsibility among business partners: Controlling issues such as child labor, forced labor, health and safety, and discrimination is not easy from thousands of miles away. Many companies send their own teams to validate their overseas factories and make sure those companies comply with the exporter’s own code of conduct. Managing this process in-house is costly and time consuming. Your international logistics provider can help you by validating transparency, consistency and integrity across your operations and ensuring that none of your partners are violating your company’s commitment to social responsibility.