Everything you need to know before the goods leave. And the sheets to write it on.
Every piece starts from a primary source and links it to the document that contains it, never to the organisation's homepage: an obligation to the text that imposes it, a number to the study that measures it. Where a source doesn't hold up, the number isn't published and the page says why. Nineteen pieces come with a template to fill in, in Word, Excel or PDF, with no form in front and without leaving an email address.
A single piece, and it covers the whole road: the eight steps between a foreign buyer's request and the goods leaving. The other forty-two go deeper into one step at a time.
Seven pages don't explain a document: they hand it over. They are the sheets to fill in, in Word, Excel and PDF, with the fields already set up. Direct links, with no form in front and without leaving an email address.
The technical sheet template: the sheet itself, not an explanation of it
Whoever looks for a template already knows what to write; what they lack is the sheet to write it on. Four free files, Word and PDF in Italian and English, without leaving an email address. Twelve fields come from the mandatory particulars of Article 9 of the European regulation, the others from what the buyer asks for to close their own numbers.
Reg. (EU) 1169/2011, Arts. 8 and 9 · SACE, 57% of small manufacturers export
Export packing list: the template to fill in
The blank sheet in four files, Excel and PDF, Italian and English, without leaving an email address. The four particulars that make it a document according to the Turin Chamber of Commerce, the difference from the Italian delivery note (DDT, which comes from an Italian tax rule, Presidential Decree 472/1996), and the description field, which is the one that stops shipments.
Turin Chamber of Commerce, the packing list · DPR 472/1996 · FedEx, customs documents
The shipping documents: three sheets, the same goods
The export invoice, the packing list and the proof of origin are filled in by different people copying from different sheets, but whoever checks them reads them together: when the same goods are described in three ways, the quickest route for them is to stop and ask. The single master data line that prevents the hold, and the €6,000 threshold on the EUR.1.
Turin Chamber of Commerce · Italian Customs Agency, €6,000 threshold
The export price list: EXW, FOB and MOQ explained for producers
A price without an Incoterm isn't a price: the buyer puts it next to one that includes transport and duties, and you come out more expensive without knowing it. The five delivery terms a small producer really comes across, the minimum order worked out from the pallet, and the six elements of a comparable price list.
ICC Academy, official text on the Incoterms · no tax guidance
What the first export order really costs
Chamber of Commerce documents cost a few tens of euros, and they aren't what sinks the margin. What sinks it are the hours nobody bills, the adaptations for the market and the date the payment comes in. The four-line method for deciding before saying yes, and why an honest single figure doesn't exist.
Lecce Chamber of Commerce, official fees · Intrum, European Payment Report 2025
Health certificate and free sale: the lead times don't compress
The buyer asks for them in the same line, but they are two documents from two different bodies, each with its own procedure and timing. And one rule that doesn't forgive: no certificate can be issued if the goods have already left. The question about documents is asked on the first day of the negotiation, not the week of loading.
Ministry of Health · ULSS 2 Marca Trevigiana · Turin and Lecce Chambers of Commerce
Sending food samples abroad: documents, costs, mistakes
Three jars given away to a non-EU country travel as a full customs shipment, with a pro forma, a declared value and proof of exit to keep. The four lines of the bill nobody works out, the four questions before packing the box, and the six-column log.
Turin Chamber of Commerce, free samples · Lecce Chamber of Commerce fees
The negotiation, from the first email to the order. Who is worth calling back, what to answer, how to build a price the buyer can compare, and what the first order really costs once the hours are counted too.
Answering an email from a foreign importer
Three days of silence and a catalogue fired straight back lose the same request, for the same reason: neither asks a question. The four jobs of the first reply, why the price list shouldn't be sent straight away, and two templates in English to adapt.
Harvard Business Review / InsideSales · CSA Research, 8,709 respondents
Serious buyer or time-waster: the signs before spending
A foreign request costs the sheet to translate, the samples with their customs shipment and three weeks of exchanges, and it is all paid before knowing who is on the other side. Four ten-minute checks, the five signs that matter, and the three questions to send before the price list, with the text in English.
SACE · Italian SMEs put to the test of export
The technical sheet in English: the fields the buyer really asks for
Three different people read it and each looks for different things. The block that is almost always missing is the logistics one, and without those numbers the buyer can't calculate transport, so they don't decide. The fields one by one, the English template to copy, and the five mistakes that stop a request without anyone telling you why.
Reg. EU 1169/2011, Annex II and Articles 15 and 30
Incoterms: who pays for what, and who is answerable at customs
A single table, one row per term: who pays the main carriage, who handles export clearance, who handles import clearance, who pays the duties, where the risk passes. Why DDP promised without being able to act as declarant in the country of arrival is a promise that can't be kept, and what really happens when the Incoterm is missing from the invoice.
ICC, Incoterms® 2020 rules · ICC Academy, EXW or FCA · Union Customs Code, Art. 5
The cost of answering by hand: the six lines of the bill
The hours of whoever answers sit inside a salary that is paid anyway, so that cost has no line of its own and is perceived as free. What it costs you isn't here: the method for calculating it with your own three numbers is, along with the two cases in which the calculation says to do nothing.
Sibill and Astraricerche, 500 SMEs · Intrum EPR 2025 · CSA Research
Private label: the questions to ask before saying yes
It looks like a big order, and it shifts much more than the price: responsibility for the information on the label, dedicated costs, the warehouse, the share of capacity that makes it impossible to say no. The eight points to clarify in writing, and the three cases in which the deal really makes sense.
Reg. (EU) 1169/2011, Art. 8 · no margin statistics: the source doesn't hold up
After the trade fair: what to do with the requests collected
Follow-up doesn't fail out of laziness: the context is lost at the stand, not at the desk, and with just a business card you can only write a generic message. The thirty-second note that saves the contact, the three groups on your return, and two templates in English.
No borrowed statistics: the 80% figure going around doesn't exist
The distributor who stops reordering: nobody will come and tell you
It is the only export loss that shows up as an absence, and absences appear on no list. A single number makes it visible, it is calculated with a spreadsheet in an afternoon, and it tells you which customer to call back today. With the three real causes of a missed reorder and the message that reopens the conversation.
No borrowed statistics: the number that counts is yours
Which sheet is needed, who issues it and with how much notice. Almost every customs hold comes from a description of the goods that doesn't match between one document and another, and the issuing bodies' lead times don't compress.
The EX-1 declaration: who makes it, and the proof to keep
The sheet the forwarder sends at release proves the goods have been released, which is a step before the one you need. The proof of exit comes later and is the exit-confirmed message, the goods have ninety days to leave, and if something jams no email arrives.
Italian Customs and Monopolies Agency, customs procedures · MRN tracking
EUR.1 or certificate of origin: not two names for the same thing
The buyer writes “send me the certificate of origin” and the forwarder replies “you need the EUR.1”: both are right and they are talking about two different documents. Preferential and non-preferential origin, two bodies, two uses, the €6,000 threshold, and why the EUR.1 doesn't exist for the United Kingdom.
Turin Chamber of Commerce · Italian Customs Agency · GOV.UK, REX threshold · Lecce Chamber of Commerce, fees
Approved exporter or REX: the calculation that decides
The status is requested to stop requesting a document: the invoice declaration has the same legal value as the EUR.1. Below €6,000 you need neither, and it is the threshold that decides, not turnover. The four-line calculation with your numbers, the three requirements, and South Korea, where the status is the only way.
Italian Customs Agency, approved exporter and the REX system · EU-Korea agreement
The health certificate: how to request it, and what requesting it late costs
Everywhere you can read what it is, almost nowhere how to request it. To which ASL (local health authority), with how many days' notice (three, five or urgent within 24 hours, it varies from one authority to another), what to attach and what it costs: it is charged by time, and the decree provides for a 30 per cent surcharge for requests made with less than twenty-four hours' notice.
Legislative Decree 32/2021, Arts. 8 and 10 · fees and notice periods stated by three different ASLs
Food export labelling, country by country
Inside the Union the language changes; outside, the list changes too: nine allergens recognised by the FDA against the fourteen European ones, and a different form of declaration. Germany, France and the United States one by one, and why checking comes before printing the batch, not after.
Reg. (EU) 1169/2011, Arts. 13-15-21 · FDA · German packaging register
Import export licence: what you really need, in order
In Italy there is no form for an import export licence. There are four different things, with different bodies and timings, and one of them is free: on 23 July 2025 Customs published a notice about the portals that charge for EORI code registration. The part that costs is the order in which they are requested, because registrations in the destination country take months.
Italian Customs Agency, EORI notice of 23 July 2025 · Ministry of Health · Lecce Chamber of Commerce
Some products have a regime all of their own, which a general food export guide doesn't cover: wine because it is under excise surveillance, olive oil because it has the strictest labelling rules Europe has written.
Exporting wine: which document, who issues it, where
In Italy the excise duty on wine is zero and the obligations stay in full: tax warehouse, excise code and the document that accompanies the goods. On export that document can also serve as a certificate of origin, vintage and variety, and the European label follows the wine outside the Union too, nutrition declaration included.
ADM, rates updated to 19 March 2026 · Reg. (EU) 2018/273 · Reg. (EU) 1308/2013, Art. 119 · TTB
Exporting olive oil: where to start, seven markets
You start from three things, not from a country: the EORI code, the technical sheet in English and a label that meets the European olive oil regulation. Packaging of no more than five litres, place of origin mandatory, and the acidity trap: if you write it on the label, you also have to state peroxides, waxes and ultraviolet absorbance.
Reg. (EU) 2022/2104 and 2022/2105 · FDA, food imports · Lecce Chamber of Commerce, fees
Six markets, and for each one the thing that really changes: who has to hold the licence, in how many languages the label must be written, what has to be registered before selling. The final list is always decided by the country of arrival.
Exporting to Switzerland: an hour's drive away, and it behaves like another continent
It borders Italy and remains a third country, with real customs. Duty is calculated in francs per 100 kg of gross weight, packaging included, so glass pays more than a pouch. Import tax on foodstuffs is 2.6%, and the label can stay in Italian because Italian is an official language of the Confederation.
FSVO · Federal Office for Customs · Federal Tax Administration · Foodstuffs Ordinance Art. 36
Exporting to the United Kingdom: the most expensive rule is on the label
Customs is always what gets discussed, and the item that changes the bill is one line of address: since 1 January 2024 prepacked food sold in Great Britain needs a British address, so that of your importer. Plus the safety and security declaration since 31 January 2025 and IPAFFS pre-notification one working day in advance.
GOV.UK, four pages with their stated last-updated date
Exporting to Canada: the licence is theirs, the documents behind it are yours
Nobody will ask you for a licence: they will ask you to support the importer's, whose preventive control plan must verify the foreign supplier. Hence the mountain of paperwork a Canadian negotiation produces. Plus the mandatory bilingual label and the CETA origin declaration with the REX number above €6,000.
Canadian Food Inspection Agency, two guides · Italian Customs Agency, CETA
Exporting to China: the gate isn't the price
In almost every market compliance comes after the negotiation. Here the order is reversed: without a registered establishment there is no shipment to prepare. From 1 June 2026 Decree 280 applies, replacing Decree 248 of 2021. A deliberately short page: on this subject a precise but outdated list does more harm than a pointer to the portal.
CIFER portal · regulatory analysis; the Chinese customs website didn't open, and we say so
Exporting to Brazil: first work out who has authority over your product
Two authorities and two routes, split by the nature of the product and not by commercial category: animal origin to the Ministry of Agriculture, everything else to the health agency. Five cumulative conditions from Article 486 of Decree 9,013/2017, and a label that since 9 October 2022 carries nutrition information on the front of the pack.
Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Art. 486 · ANVISA, rotulagem
Exporting to Dubai: the label is registered before you sell
Compliance doesn't arrive at the border, it arrives before: the product must be registered in the ZAD system before it is placed on the market, and no food enters the country for the first time without the federal ministry's approval. The surprising part is that even a change of recipe or artwork reopens the procedure.
Official portal of the UAE government · Lecce Chamber of Commerce, legalisation
What applies to an SME that uses artificial intelligence tools, from when, and with what consequences. Every obligation is linked to the article that imposes it, and the dates are those updated for the latest postponements.
The AI Act already applies. The part that concerns you is smaller than it looks.
What obligations it imposes on a business that uses artificial intelligence: which ones concern it, from when, and the four things to put in order.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Arts. 4 and 50
Who the AI Act applies to, and in what role
You don't choose the role, it follows from the facts. And there is an article that turns a business from user into provider without anyone signing anything: all it takes is putting your own brand on it, or changing the purpose of a general-purpose tool.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Arts. 2, 3, 16, 25 and 26
The AI Act: all the deadlines, updated for the July 2026 postponement
On 24 July 2026 the timetable was rewritten and the high-risk dates slipped to 2 December 2027 and 2 August 2028. The postponement, however, concerns precisely the part a small business doesn't use, while the part that concerns it has already come into force.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Arts. 111 and 113 / Reg. (EU) 2026/1744
The AI Act risk levels, and the point where an SME ends up inside them
The coloured pyramid isn't in the regulation, and classification follows the use rather than the tool. Point 4 of Annex III puts staff recruitment among high-risk uses: buying something that screens CVs is enough.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Arts. 5, 6 and Annex III
AI training is mandatory, and the obligation kicked in before the one everyone is watching
Article 4 has applied since 2 February 2025, eighteen months before Article 50. You don't need a course with a certificate: the European Commission writes that an internal record of the initiatives taken is enough.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Art. 4 / European Commission, AI Literacy Q&A
AI Act penalties: the figures going around are the maximums
Thirty-five million is a theoretical maximum tied to prohibited practices. For SMEs, paragraph 6 of Article 99 reverses the criterion: the lower of the fixed amount and the percentage applies, not the higher.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Arts. 99, 100 and 101 / GDPR, Art. 83
The AI Act and the GDPR: the second hasn't cancelled the first
Article 2 states that it is without prejudice to the GDPR, so the two add up. For an SME the Garante (the Italian data protection authority) doesn't supervise the AI Act: ACN does. And the impact assessments are two, not one.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Arts. 2, 26, 27 and 74 / GDPR, Arts. 28 and 35
The Italian law on artificial intelligence: five things the European regulation doesn't say
In force since 10 October 2025. It touches employment, the intellectual professions, minors' data, copyright (it now says “works of human creativity”) and introduces an offence that didn't exist before.
Law no. 132 of 23 September 2025, Arts. 4, 11, 13, 20, 24, 25 and 26
Four pieces start from a published statistic and do three things: they say what it really measures, what it implies for an Italian business, and at which point that figure shouldn't be stretched. The source is always the original study, never a second-hand citation.
Which process to automate first: the method, not a list of tools
A list of tools answers the wrong question, and it ages. Here is the method: map what really happens in a week, put four values next to each row (frequency, repetitiveness, cost of an error, ownership of the data), take a starting measurement by hand, and look at the correction rate afterwards.
Sibill · Astraricerche, 500 SMEs · OECD; no savings percentage promised
81% of Italian SMEs use AI. One in four has integrated it.
Between the two numbers there are fifty-six percentage points, and in that space sits the majority of businesses that have already paid for artificial intelligence without having earned anything from it yet. Cost, incidentally, is cited as the main barrier by only 6.6%.
Sibill · Astraricerche, 500 SMEs / OECD, more than 5,000 SMEs in 7 countries
Five minutes. Then the request belongs to someone else.
Almost every business thinks it answers quickly and almost none has ever measured it. What the figure on first responses really says, why the delay doesn't come from people being slow, and how to get your own starting measurement in an afternoon.
Harvard Business Review · InsideSales
80% of customer service will be automated. And 64% of customers would rather it wasn't.
Two forecasts from the same body of research, which seem to contradict each other and don't. The word that holds up the whole of the first one is “common”, and almost every citation cuts it out.
Gartner, press release of 5 March 2025
The statistics going around about automation are often quoted without anyone having opened the research. Here every number is linked to the document that contains it, and when the source doesn't hold up the number isn't published. That is why there are few of these articles.
If a term isn't clear.
The glossary gathers 131 entries across artificial intelligence, automation, data and compliance, defined in Italian. Where a term has an operational consequence, the entry states it.