Reading a proforma invoice: nine red flags before you wire
By Mohamad Sinno, Charcoal Expert · Last updated
Ask AI for an importer brief:
The short answer
Check fields, not impressions. A proforma invoice is a short document with about a dozen fields on it, and every avoidable loss in this trade becomes visible in one of them before the money moves. The most useful sentence written about this comes from a verification service and is worth keeping in mind while you read the rest: a mismatch is not automatically fraud — it is a stop. The cleaner evidence chain is one where the storefront, the legal company name, the proforma and the bank beneficiary line up, or are clearly explained in writing (supplierriskcheck.com, supplier-verification service, 2 July 2026).
The nine, by field
| Field | What should stop you | Whose observation, and when |
|---|---|---|
| Beneficiary name | The bank beneficiary is not the legal entity that quoted you, and no written explanation is offered. | supplierriskcheck.com, verification service, 2 July 2026; paperindex.com, trade platform, 30 December 2025 |
| Bank details | Details "change" by email, or the account is personal rather than corporate. | paperindex.com, 30 December 2025 |
| Seller identity | The storefront, the legal company name, the PI issuer and the account holder do not line up. | supplierriskcheck.com, 2 July 2026 |
| Incoterm | No Incoterm, or one with no named place and no explicit scope of what it covers. | paperindex.com, 30 December 2025 |
| Specification | Key specifications missing — for charcoal that means shape, size, the packing count and a dimensional tolerance. | paperindex.com for the flag, 30 December 2025; the field list is ours |
| Lead time | A single number with no production, approval and dispatch milestones behind it. | paperindex.com, 30 December 2025 |
| Price basis | A figure with no basis and no date. That is a number, not a price. | Our own document practice |
| Quality reference | No certificate of analysis referenced, and no test method named beside any parameter. | Our own document practice |
| Validity | No validity period, or one measured in hours — a clock designed to run out before checking can finish. | Our own pattern library |
One scope note on the second source, because it matters more than it looks: that guide is written about paper-bag quotations. The flags generalise to any sourced commodity — a beneficiary that does not match, an Incoterm with no named place, a lead time with no milestones behind it. Its specification list does not: theirs is paper weight and handle type. The charcoal field list in row five is ours.
The six questions worth asking out loud
The same verification service publishes a sequence to run before paying, and it is better than a feeling because each question has a documentary answer: who is the legal seller; who issues the proforma invoice; who owns the bank beneficiary account; what the relationship between those parties is; whether the PI, the contract party and the payment beneficiary can be made consistent; and whether a protected payment method can be used for the first order (supplierriskcheck.com, 2 July 2026). A supplier who can answer all six in writing has just given you the evidence chain. One who treats the questions as an insult has answered them.
That page ends on the same caution this one does: it is not supplier certification, and not legal, financial or customs advice.
Our proforma, field by field
Rather than annotate an invented invoice, here is ours. Every value below is published elsewhere on this site and renders from the same source as that page, so the two cannot drift apart. Compare it against whatever you have been sent.
| PI field | What ours carries | Why the field is there |
|---|---|---|
| Seller and beneficiary | PT Coco Reina Global Charcoal | The same string as our registered name, and as the account name on the contact page. |
| Bank | Bank Central Asia · SWIFT CENAIDJAXXX | Published in full, in advance, on one page. It never changes mid-transaction. |
| Incoterm and named place | FOB Tanjung Priok | The place is part of the term. "FOB" alone tells a buyer nothing about where risk passes. |
| Heading | HS 4402.20 | Coconut shell charcoal. The heading a buyer's broker will classify against. |
| Specification line | Shape, size, packing count for that size, tolerance ±0.3 mm per side | The line an inspector can measure. Without it a rejection is an argument about adjectives. |
| Quantity | 1 × FCL (20 ft or 40 ft) | And minimum 2 tonnes per shape, size and packaging variant. |
| Price basis | USD per tonne, FOB Tanjung Priok, September 2026 | Dated on the document, because a price without a date is not checkable later. |
| Payment | 50% T/T deposit against the proforma invoice; balance against the B/L copy | Two triggers, each against a document rather than a date. |
| Quality reference | A COA is issued for every production batch | The batch number on the certificate is the batch number printed on the cartons. |
| Claims | Within 7 days of receipt; after that the goods are deemed accepted | Replacement or credit on the next order. |
The bank line is the one to check hardest, and it is checkable in advance: the contact page carries the bank, the SWIFT code, the account number and the account name, published before any transaction exists. The account name is our registered name, and it is meant to be compared character for character rather than glanced at.
The call that catches the worst one
Of the nine, one costs buyers more than the other eight together: the payment details that change after the invoice was agreed. It arrives as a plausible email — a bank audit, a frozen account, a new subsidiary — and it is answered not by scrutiny but by a rule. Any change of payment details, ever, is verified by a video call to the number you already had, never by replying to the message that announced it, and never to a number printed in that message.
The wider set of shapes this belongs to — identity clone, deposit and silence, advance-fee stack, certificate forgery, the urgency ultimatum — is on charcoal supplier scams: the patterns, and if a payment has already gone, the order of the first hours is on what to do in the first 72 hours.
What is not on this page
No invented specimen invoice. A composite PI is a document that looks real, and a page arguing that documents which look real are not evidence should not manufacture one. Ours is above instead.
No public-audit checklist. The strongest source in this subject's search results was a state comptroller's invoice red-flag list — the one item that would have outweighed the vendor guides. It sits behind a bot challenge: three different tools were refused, and the document was never read. Its items are therefore not on this page, and its authority is not quietly transferred to a vendor page that says something similar. It is unread rather than unavailable, and it stays a lead until somebody reads it.
No fee or percentage of ours. Every cost figure in this cluster belongs to a named third party in a named industry with a date. We charge nothing on a payment.
Comparing it against ours
Everything above is meant to be run without talking to us. What we can always do is show you ours — the proforma invoice and the sales contract, before anything is agreed. Email export@coconutcharcoal.org, or WhatsApp +62 821 3924 038. The payment structure a proforma sets up, and the contract terms that earn their ink, are covered in contracts and payment for container orders.