A Commercial Invoice is typically a document that is notarized and then signed by the Chamber of Commerce. Once this has been done, the Commercial Invoice can be authenticated by Global Affairs and then submitted to the Embassy or Consular office of the destination country for legalization.

The staff at Capital Authentication are very familiar with the authentication and legalization of Canadian documents, including a Commercial Invoice, for use abroad. We specialize in saving you time and money by personally attending Global Affairs Canada. We also submit and retrieve your documents from the destination countries Embassy or Consulate. Feel free to reach out to our office and see what we can do for you.

We will happily discuss our unique approach to the authentication and legalization process while, at the same time, provide you with an itemized breakdown of the anticipated fees and overall timeline.

There are a number of factors that have an impact on the cost of having a Commercial Invoice authenticated and legalized. Some of the factors include the cost of notarization, whether translation is required, the cost of the legalization fees as charged by a particular Embassy or Consulate, other documents that might need to accompany the Commercial Invoice, courier costs.

Our friendly staff would welcome the opportunity to provide you with an accurate breakdown of costs as it pertains to your specific requirements.

Our office works very efficiently with the authentication and legalization of documents, including a Commercial Invoice. The ability to have documents completed quickly really comes down to how efficiently an Embassy or Consular Office is processing documents. Some Embassies complete documents while you wait while others can take six or more business days. Our expert staff welcome the opportunity to explain all of your options available to you including how long we anticipate a document will take to be authenticated and legalized.

To make it easier to understand, we have grouped our authentication and legalization fees together. Our office offers four different processing options depending upon urgency. More importantly, we employ a system that we refer to as The Completion Time Method. When suggesting prices, we balance the total time expected to take to have the document(s) authenticated by Global Affairs and then legalized by a particular Embassy or Consular Office. Employing our method translates into lower fees for our customers.

When considering using a third party service provider to assist with the authentication and legalization process one might contemplate using either an authentication and legalization service and/or process server.  Various service providers can be found by doing simple internet searches.  But, are they different?   Generally speaking, the various third party service providers are not very different.  The main differences come down to knowledge about the overall process, requirements of a particular diplomatic mission and the fees that are charged by the third party service provider.  It is very important that one complete a minimum level of due diligence when choosing a third party service provider as one will find that the fees charged can vary widely.

Our office offers a number of different payment options such as money order, e-transfer, direct payment into our account, credit card (visa or mastercard).  If you have any questions about payment methods, please feel free to reach out to our office either by e-mail or telephone as we will happily discuss payment options.

We suggest using a national courier such as FedEx, Purolator, DHL or Canada Post “Xpresspost”.  Each of these courier options offers a form of tracking and considering that the documents are sensitive in nature the ability to track your item is strongly recommended.

Once the authentication and legalization services have been completed, our clients can provide a prepaid return courier to our office.  If however it is more convenient, our office will happily arrange for the return courier either to our client directly or to an authorized third party of their choosing.

At Capital Authentication we do not like to return documents to a client using regular lettermail.  Regular lettermail is not encouraged given the sensitive nature of the documents.  However, where a client has specifically requests this method of return, we will comply.

This is a very good question and it really depends upon where one intends to use the document.  As long as the document is a Canadian document, Global Affairs Canada will generally authenticate either an original document or a notarized copy of the document.  If using a notarized document, the notary must be a Canadian notary.   The more important question to ask is whether the diplomatic mission in question will accept notarized documents instead of original documents.  It is always best to consult the diplomatic mission to determine if original documents and/or notarized documents can be used.  There are some diplomatic missions that will only accept original documents.

Should a problem arise with the processing of your documents due to a change in policy or requirements by Global Affairs Canada or at a particular diplomatic mission our office will be in contact with our clients immediately, by e-mail and/or telephone, so as to identify the problem and determine the best possible solution.

There are many instances when it is more convenient for a client to have documents sent directly to our office as opposed to their receiving them first.  For example, government issued documents such as birth certificates can be sent directly to us.  We can receive them and start compiling a client dossier with the authentication and legalization component to commence once we have all of the documents.