Not for express shipments. According to Receita Federal (August 2024), the DRE or DU-E can be filed by the courier company, and the sender doesn't need its own Siscomex registration.
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Five Signs Your Brazilian Small Business Has Outgrown DIY International Shipping
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A Brazilian small business has outgrown DIY international shipping when five signs show up together: hours lost putting each shipment together, overseas customers chasing tracking updates, growing export sales, returns turning into headaches and paperwork errors hitting cash flow. At that point, handling every shipment case by case stops saving money and starts holding exports back.
Every small exporter in Brazil starts the same way. An order comes in from Lisbon or Miami, someone on the team fills in the invoice by hand, gets a freight quote, prints the label and hopes for the best. With ten orders a month, that works. With a hundred, the same routine swallows the whole week.
Why do so many small Brazilian businesses reach this point?
Because more and more of them are selling abroad. Brazil closed 2025 with 29,818 exporting companies, the highest number on record, and 11,822 of them are micro businesses, small businesses or MEIs (Microempreendedor Individual, Brazil's sole-trader category). Source: MDIC (Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services), Annual Report on Foreign Trade by Company Size, March 2026.
The growth at the small end is what stands out. Micro businesses and MEIs that export went from about 2,600 in 2015 to 6,200 in 2025, rising from 13% to 20.7% of all Brazilian exporters. Together they sold US$ 870.8 million abroad in 2025, while small businesses (EPPs) sold US$ 1.8 billion (MDIC, March 2026).
In other words, thousands of companies have entered foreign trade in recent years with the setup of a neighbourhood shop. And the shipping process that worked at launch doesn't keep up with growth. The five signs below show where DIY shipping from Brazil starts to give way.
Sign 1: Are you spending hours putting each international shipment together?
If a whole morning every week goes on getting quotes, filling in documents and booking pickups, shipping has become a second job. At the start, doing it all yourself makes sense: you compare two or three options, book, print and hand the parcel over.
The trouble starts when orders pile up. Every international shipment asks for data that a shipment within Brazil doesn't: a detailed goods description, a declared value, a classification code and full consignee details abroad. An address correction or a parcel held at a foreign customs office needs someone on your team to sort it out.
The real cost isn't the time spent on shipping. It's what your team didn't do instead: answering buyers, developing products, finding a new distributor. For a five-person company, eight hours a week at the shipping desk is 20% of one employee.
What to change: bring bookings, documents and tracking together in one digital tool, and keep a product register with descriptions and codes already filled in. With a DHL Express business account, for example, you can book pickups, create shipping documents and follow each shipment online, while the operation stays with people who do it every day.
Sign 2: Are overseas customers asking where their orders are?
If your inbox is filling up with "where is my order?" emails, the tracking you offer isn't doing its job. International buyers expect to follow an order the same way they follow a food delivery on their phone.
Visibility tends to disappear when a shipment changes hands. You know the parcel left São Paulo, but you lose sight of it once it passes to another network in the destination country. The customer wants news, and someone on your team has to chase third parties for it, often in another time zone.
This matters more in cross-border sales than at home. A buyer abroad doesn't know your brand, can't pop into your shop and is often buying from you for the first time. Silence on tracking looks like risk to them.
What to change: choose a partner that controls the shipment from pickup to delivery, with end-to-end tracking in a single system. Send the tracking number in the order confirmation email and explain, in one line, that the shipment will go through customs in the destination country.
Sign 3: Are your sales outside Brazil growing?
If exports now make up a meaningful share of revenue, improvising becomes a tax and customs risk. You can handle one international order a month by hand. Twenty a week need a process, because every shipment carries obligations on both sides of the border.
On the Brazilian side, exporting by courier has its own rules. According to Receita Federal (Brazil's Federal Revenue Service), shipments with goods worth up to US$ 1,000 can leave with a DRE (Declaração de Remessas de Exportação, the courier export declaration), filed by the courier company.
Above that, or when the product needs an export licence, the DU-E (Declaração Única de Exportação, the single export declaration) applies, filed on Portal Único Siscomex, Brazil's foreign trade portal. On this route, the sender doesn't need its own Siscomex registration. Source: Receita Federal, postal and express shipments manual, updated August 2024.
The data still comes from you. The commercial invoice has to match what is in the box, the HS code must describe the product accurately, and the description can't be something vague like "gift" or "sample". The guide to import and export documents covers each one.
On the buyer's side come the duties and taxes of the destination country. In the European Union, parcels worth up to €150 have paid a flat €3 fee per item since 1 July 2026 (Source: European Commission, June 2026). Whether you or your customer pays that bill depends on the Incoterm agreed in the sale.
A wrong HS code or an incomplete invoice can hold a shipment at customs, create unexpected costs or send the goods back. For someone buying from you for the first time, that's not the introduction you had in mind.
What to change: work with an international shipping partner that has customs expertise built into the service, and standardise the invoice, HS code and Incoterm for each product. DHL Express, for example, serves more than 220 countries and territories and guides exporters through the paperwork, so you don't have to become a customs broker. For the full picture, the Discover guide to exporting from Brazil lays out the steps.
Sign 4: Have international returns become a problem?
If every return from abroad turns into a mini project, your process isn't ready to scale. At the start, returns are simple: the customer gets in touch, someone arranges the return, the item arrives and the refund goes out.
In international shipping, the way back has a detail that catches first-time exporters off guard: goods returning to Brazil come in as an import. Under Receita Federal rules, bringing back exported goods means amending the export declaration and filing an import declaration, and it only applies in the cases listed in Brazil's Customs Regulation, such as defects, unsold consignment goods or a rule change in the destination country. Source: Receita Federal, Portal Único export manual, August 2024.
Without a plan, returns eat into margins in three ways: the freight back, your team's time and goods sitting at customs. They also leave the customer waiting for weeks.
What to change: design your international returns process together with your sales policy, with clear rules on what can come back, who pays the freight and when it makes more sense to refund without asking for the item. The guide to reverse logistics helps you map that flow.
Sign 5: Are shipping mistakes starting to cost you?
If errors are no longer the exception and have become a budget line, it's time to change. At low volumes, a wrong label or the wrong service is just an annoyance. You fix it and move on.
At higher volumes, percentages become real numbers. Picture a natural cosmetics brand from Minas Gerais sending 500 orders a month to Portugal and the United States. If 1% of them go wrong, that's five cases a month and sixty a year. Each one needs investigating, a reshipment or refund, and an explanation to the customer.
The most common international shipping mistakes are predictable:
- incomplete addresses, missing the postcode or the consignee's phone number;
- packaging that can't cope with a long journey with stopovers and aircraft changes;
- a service that doesn't fit the delivery time the customer expects;
- an invoice whose value or description doesn't match the contents;
- a product restricted in the destination country, such as cosmetics, food or batteries.
The damage goes beyond the reshipment. An excellent product can still earn a poor review because it arrived late, damaged or not at all.
What to change: cut down on manual data entry. A partner with its own network, end-to-end tracking and customs support takes document checks, service selection and tracking hunts off your desk, and that matters more as volumes grow and the margin for error shrinks.
How do you spot the five signs in your day-to-day operation?
The table below turns each sign into what it looks like in the daily routine of a small Brazilian exporter, and into the first change that solves most of the problem.
Sign | What it looks like day to day | What to change |
Too much time arranging shipments | A morning a week spent on quotes, invoices and pickups | Bookings, documents and tracking in one digital tool |
Customers asking about orders | Emails from abroad chasing updates | End-to-end tracking sent with the order confirmation |
Growing export sales | Doubts on every order about HS codes, invoices and Incoterms | Standard product register and a partner with customs support |
Complicated returns | Returned goods stuck at customs as an import | A written international returns policy |
Costly mistakes | Reshipments and refunds every month | Less manual data entry and an invoice check before pickup |
When is it time to professionalise your international shipping?
When two or more signs show up at the same time. That doesn't mean you got shipping wrong. It means your business has reached a size where improvising costs more than having a process.
Use this checklist to decide your next step:
- Add up your team's weekly hours on international shipping and compare them with selling time.
- Count how many contacts from overseas customers last month were only about tracking.
- Check that every exported product has a defined description, HS code and Incoterm.
- List the international returns from the last quarter and what each one cost.
- Work out your shipping error rate and multiply it by next year's expected volume.
If the answers made you uncomfortable, the way forward is to hand international shipping to a partner that takes on the operational and customs work, while your team focuses on selling. For small businesses in Brazil, it's usually the first process worth taking out of the office.
Frequently asked questions about international shipping for small businesses in Brazil
Shipments with goods worth up to US$ 1,000 can leave Brazil with a DRE (Declaração de Remessas de Exportação), filed by the courier company. If the product needs an export licence, the declaration is the DU-E, with no value limit (Receita Federal, August 2024).
Returning goods enter Brazil through an import clearance. The tax treatment depends on the reason for the return, which must fit one of the cases in Brazil's Customs Regulation, such as a defect or unsold consignment goods.
It depends on the Incoterm agreed. Under DAP, the buyer pays duties and taxes on arrival; under DDP, the seller covers them and needs to build that cost into the price.
In 2025, 11,822 of Brazil's 29,818 exporting companies were micro businesses, small businesses or MEIs, according to MDIC (March 2026).
Sources
- MDIC: Brazil reaches 29,818 exporting companies, the highest in the historical series (Annual Report on Foreign Trade by Company Size, March 2026)
- Receita Federal: Postal and express shipments: customs declaration (DU-E and DRE for exports), updated 01/08/2024
- Receita Federal: Portal Único export manual: return of exported goods, updated 22/08/2024
- European Commission: Ensuring fairness and safety: EUR 3 customs duty on low-value parcels, 29/06/2026
Take the next step with your international shipping
If you recognised your company in two or more of these signs, it's time to stop putting every shipment together by hand. A business account gives you digital shipping tools, customs support and terms that grow with your volume.
Leave the shipping complexity to people who handle it every day and keep your team focused on selling to the world: open a DHL Express business account.
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