The Scenario
You are the operations lead at an export company. Every week you ship 45 international orders to 12 different countries. The items, values, quantities, and countries of origin are all in a Google Sheet, one row per item, with the order ID in column A tying them together.
Before any international label can be purchased, Shippo needs a customs declaration for each shipment, with customs items attached. Without the declarations, the shipments will not clear customs and the labels are invalid.
The bad version:
- You open Shippo's customs creation UI
- You find order one, add each item manually, enter the description, value, quantity, and country of origin
- You save the customs item ID and repeat for each item in the order
- Then you create the customs declaration object linking all items for that order
- You do this 45 times across 45 orders
- It takes the better part of Wednesday afternoon.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads the sheet and creates Shippo customs items and declarations for every order automatically.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each row in my International Orders sheet, create a Shippo customs item using the product description in column C, value in column D, quantity in column E, and country of origin in column F. Write the customs item ID into column G.
SheetXAI creates the customs item objects row by row and writes each returned ID into column G. Once you have item IDs, you can follow up with a prompt to create the declarations:
For each unique order ID in column A of my International Orders sheet, create a Shippo customs declaration linking all customs item IDs in column G that share that order ID. Write the customs declaration ID into column H.
What You Get
A complete customs paper trail in the sheet:
- Column G — the Shippo customs item ID for each line item
- Column H — the Shippo customs declaration ID for each unique order, linking all its items
- Ready for label purchase — the declaration IDs in column H can be passed directly to Shippo when creating shipments and purchasing labels
Each customs item record carries the product description, declared value, quantity, and country of origin exactly as entered in the sheet. No manual re-entry at the shipment level.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
International order exports are rarely customs-ready. SheetXAI handles the cleanup and creation in the same prompt.
When product descriptions contain internal SKUs instead of readable names
Your export has "PROD-4421-BLK-M" in column C. Customs forms need a human-readable description.
For each row in my International Orders sheet, look at the product description in column C. If it looks like an internal SKU, translate it to a plain-language description before creating the Shippo customs item. Write the customs item ID into column G.
When declared values are in the wrong currency
Your export has values in USD, but some orders ship to countries where the declared value should match local currency for the customs form.
For each row in my International Orders sheet, check the destination country in column B. If the country is in the EU, convert the declared value in column D from USD to EUR using the current exchange rate before creating the Shippo customs item. Write the converted value back into column D and the customs item ID into column G.
When some rows are missing country of origin
A handful of rows have blank country of origin. Customs forms require this field.
For rows in my International Orders sheet where column F is blank, write "US" as the default country of origin before creating the Shippo customs item. Write a note into column I indicating which rows used the default. Write the customs item ID into column G for all rows.
When you want to create customs items, create declarations, and write a per-order summary in one shot
Your broker wants a summary of each declaration, total declared value and item count, for their records.
For each row in my International Orders sheet, create a Shippo customs item using columns C through F and write the item ID into column G. Then, for each unique order ID in column A, create a Shippo customs declaration linking all its customs items and write the declaration ID into column H. Finally, create a new tab called "Declaration Summary" with one row per unique order showing order ID, number of items, and total declared value.
The pattern: item creation, declaration assembly, and summary reporting in one prompt.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any international order sheet with product, value, quantity, and origin data, then ask it to create Shippo customs declarations for every order. The Shippo integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to create Shippo orders from a sales orders sheet or the Shippo in Google Sheets overview.