Declaring is the act of putting a written statement of a shipment's contents, value and origin on file with a customs authority. DHL states the mechanism directly: import customs clearance "is the process of declaring goods to customs authorities when they enter a country." Declaring is the input a government works from; clearance, covered on our other guides, is the decision it makes afterward.
Declaring puts words on file. It does not by itself move or release anything.
“Import customs clearance is the process of declaring goods to customs authorities when they enter a country.”DHL, Customs Clearance & Customs Declaration FAQ, dhl.com, read 2026-09-02
Read that sentence carefully and the sequence falls out of it on its own: declaring happens first, and clearance is the name for everything a customs authority does with what was declared. A parcel can be fully, accurately declared and still be waiting several days on the decision that follows — declaring is not itself a form of progress toward delivery, it is the paperwork a decision gets made against.
“A customs declaration form is required for international shipments to inform customs authorities about the contents, value, and origin of your goods.”DHL, Customs Clearance & Customs Declaration FAQ, dhl.com, read 2026-09-02
A description precise enough to identify the actual item, not the broad category it belongs to. A category name is exactly the kind of vagueness that stalls a classification and turns a declared shipment into one waiting for a query.
The real price paid, not an estimate. Duty and any low-value exemption are both calculated from this one figure, which is why a declared value has legal weight rather than being a formality.
The country of manufacture, plus a stated reason — sale, gift, return or sample. Both feed the same classification decision as the description and the value.
The answer changes depending on which border the declaration is for, and it is rarely the same party both times.
Whoever creates the shipping label states these fields — typed by hand at a counter, or on SMKlog's four self-service lanes, generated automatically from the details entered at checkout before the label is bought.
The party actually filing an entry with that country's customs authority, most often the carrier's own broker acting on the paperwork already attached to the parcel, not the original sender submitting anything a second time.
The same underlying information — description, value, origin, reason — travels with the parcel and gets read by both governments in turn, rather than being collected twice from scratch.
On the four countries SMKlog sells self-service — Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia — the export declaration this page describes is completed at checkout, before the label is bought, using the product, value and destination already entered for the quote. What we do not do is the import-side declaration on arrival; that stays with the carrier's own broker in the destination country, and any duty it produces is billed to the recipient.
Declaration requirements are set by each destination country's own customs authority and revised without notice. Treat the fields above as the general pattern DHL describes; a specific country can require more.
It means somebody has put a formal, written statement of the shipment's contents on file with a customs authority. DHL defines the underlying process directly: "Import customs clearance is the process of declaring goods to customs authorities when they enter a country." Declaring is the input; clearance is the decision that follows it.
DHL states plainly that "a customs declaration form is required for international shipments to inform customs authorities about the contents, value, and origin of your goods." In practice that means a description specific enough to identify the item rather than a broad category, the real value rather than an estimate, the country where it was made, and the reason it is moving — sale, gift, return or sample.
It depends which side of the border the declaration is for. On the way out, whoever creates the shipping label states these fields — typed by hand, or on SMKlog's four self-service lanes, generated automatically from checkout details. On the way in, the party actually filing an entry with the destination country, commonly the carrier's own broker, is the one making that declaration, not the original sender a second time.
No, and the order matters. Declaring comes first — it is the information going on file. Clearance is the decision a customs authority makes after reading it. A shipment can be declared and still be waiting on a decision; see our guides to what "clearance started" and "clearance completed" mean for the two statuses that follow.
Different question, same territory. "Declared at customs" describes an act — the information has been submitted. "A customs declaration" is a noun, and on our own site it turns out to name three different documents depending on which one is asked about; our what is a customs declaration guide sorts out which is which.