Use case

Invoicing and shipping at scale

An auction closes. Now the work begins: invoicing each buyer in the right currency and language, with the right tax treatment for their jurisdiction; shipping each lot across borders with the right customs declaration, the right insurance, the right carrier for the route. Each step has rules. The rules differ by lot, by buyer, by destination. Off-the-shelf invoicing tools handle a slice; the rest still gets done by hand.

Engagement

Cross-border invoicing and shipping for auction houses

We build the post-sale logistics layer for auction houses with international buyers. The pipeline takes each closed lot and produces the right invoice (currency, language, jurisdiction-aware tax, the house's brand) and the right shipping plan (carrier, customs declaration, insurance tier, special-handling flags for fragile or restricted items). What used to be a back-office team's week of post-auction work runs in a fraction of the time, with the edge cases surfaced for human review and the routine cases shipping through.

What we can build here

Capabilities

Invoices that adapt to each buyer

A German collector receives a German-language invoice with EUR formatting and the right VAT treatment for an EU-to-EU sale. Their US counterpart gets an English invoice with USD and the right export-sale treatment. The same engine handles both, and dozens more variants, without forking the codebase or staffing each variant.

Shipping plans, customs declarations, the right carrier

Each lot has its own profile: weight, dimensions, fragility, declared value, restricted-material flags, destination jurisdiction. AI picks the right carrier for the route, drafts the customs declaration with the right tariff codes, sets the insurance tier, and surfaces the lots that need a human to look (a violin to a country with strict restrictions on certain woods, a high-value lot to an address the carrier flags).

VAT, customs, and tax across jurisdictions

Tax rules change. They differ by jurisdiction, by buyer type, by lot category, by sale type (auction vs private treaty), and by import-export direction. The pipeline encodes the rules and updates as they change; staff don't have to remember every edge case, and the auditors find the trail intact.

One pipeline, every variant

Boutique houses might run two auctions a year; commercial houses might run one a week. Either way, the pipeline scales: same engine for the German collector's catalog statement and the US wholesale settlement; same engine for the 50-lot specialty sale and the 2,000-lot estate cycle.

Questions

FAQ

What about the lots that are genuinely complex (restricted materials, sensitive provenance, jurisdictional grey areas)?

Those get a human. The pipeline's job is to handle the routine flow at scale and surface the edge cases for review, not to make calls a customs broker or a legal adviser should make. We design the threshold with you.

Does this integrate with our existing back-office and accounting?

Yes. Closed lots flow in from your auction system; invoices, shipping plans, and accounting entries flow back to wherever you track them. The pipeline runs alongside what you already have.

What about regulatory changes like tax law shifts or new restrictions?

Built in from day one. The rules are encoded with versioning; when a jurisdiction changes its tax treatment or a new restriction lands, we update the rules and the pipeline picks up the change in the next cycle. Auditors can replay any past invoice against the rules in effect at the time.

Also relevant in

Auction houses Archive