Docs · Overview
What Forto is, in five minutes
Forto is the operational layer between your Shopify store, carriers, and customs. Your customer pays one total at checkout — duties and taxes included — and Forto handles the labels, the border, the paperwork, and the money behind it.
The life of a parcel on Forto
Every international order follows the same path. Knowing it makes the rest of these docs obvious:
- ·Checkout — the landed cost (goods + shipping + duty + tax) is quoted live in your Shopify checkout and collected with the order.
- ·Dispatch — Forto picks the best carrier for the lane across its own accounts and any you’ve connected, generates the label, and books the pickup.
- ·Customs — products are HS-classified (with human review when the system isn’t confident), the commercial invoice and CN22/23 are generated, and customs data travels electronically with the label.
- ·Delivery or return — your customer gets tracking and owes nothing at the door. If they return, a no-login portal issues the label and the refund settles back against the original order.
- ·Settlement — every cost lands on one statement line per shipment: carrier, duty, tax, Forto’s fee, and any later correction.
Plans at a glance
The plans differ in what Forto carries for you:
- Starter — Know. Nothing — customers pay duties and tax at the door.
- Growth — Collect. The money — duty and tax collected at checkout and prepaid at the border.
- Pro — We register, we file. The tax — Forto is taxpayer of record, up to $25k of cross-border sales a month.
- Enterprise — Nothing left on your desk. Everything — on a coverage line set with your account team.
Prices, limits and every fee are on Pricing. Which countries Forto ships to is on Coverage; the rule at each border is in Duties & taxes.
One honest note before you start
Forto is in private beta. The product on these pages is real and running, but you’ll be an early merchant — which also means hands-on setup and direct answers from the people building it. Email support@forto.app with anything these docs don’t cover.
Where to go next
- ·Getting started — install, connect, and go live in seven steps.
- ·Duties & taxes — how landed cost, DDP, IOSS and the taxpayer-of-record model actually work.
- ·Billing & plans — the wallet, how limits are counted, and what a shipment really costs you.