Tender Documentation, Invoices and Customs Documents - On the Tender's Deadline and the Shipment's Schedule

Tenders: the notice, the file and the deadline

Public procurement in Georgia runs through the state electronic procurement system in Georgian, and foreign bidders must submit qualification documents - registry extracts, charters, licenses, financial statements, references and experience certificates, staff CVs and qualifications, ISO certificates, bank guarantees and powers of attorney - in notarized Georgian translation, with the technical and price proposals in Georgian; Georgian companies bidding abroad - on EU-funded and national tenders in the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caucasus, on World Bank, ADB and EBRD procurement, on Turkish, Gulf and Chinese projects - face the same requirement in the other direction, in the tender's language and often through the country's sworn translators. Tender documents are long, the deadline is fixed, and tender committees disqualify for formal defects rather than reading generously. We translate the tender notice and specifications for the bidding team first, then the bid and the qualification documents into the tender's language with a team working from one glossary, complete the tender's forms in its format, arrange notarization and apostilles in parallel, and deliver on the deadline with a day's margin.

Qualification documents and what committees check

A tender committee checks qualification documents against published criteria: the registry extract for the bidder's existence and signing authority, the license for the activity, the financial statements for turnover and ratios, the references and experience certificates for similar contracts within the period, the staff qualifications for the key personnel, the ISO certificates for the management systems, the no-debt certificates for tax compliance, and the bank guarantee for the bid security. Each must be current, apostilled where the tender requires, translated in the certification the tender specifies, and consistent with the bid forms. Our tender team knows the formal requirements of Georgian state procurement and of the main international procurement frameworks, checks each document against the tender's list, keeps names, figures and dates consistent across the file, and flags a missing or expired document early enough to replace it. After award, we translate the contract, the guarantees, the acts of acceptance, the variation orders and the correspondence with the employer over the life of the contract, with the same glossary.

Invoices, packing lists and certificates of origin

Every shipment travels with a commercial invoice, a packing list and, for most trade regimes, a certificate of origin, and customs on both sides read them against the declaration and the goods. Georgian exporters of wine, mineral water, hazelnuts, fruit, ferroalloys and other goods, and Georgian importers of machinery, vehicles, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and food, need these documents in the language of the receiving customs or, for many countries, in English, and Georgian customs accepts documents in Georgian, English and, in practice, Russian, requiring translation of others; certificates of origin under the EU DCFTA, the CIS free trade regime, the China-Georgia FTA, the Turkey-Georgia FTA and EFTA have their own forms (EUR.1, the CT-1 certificate, the FTA-specific forms) with fields that must match the invoice exactly. We translate invoices, packing lists and certificates of origin with the HS codes, quantities, values, Incoterms and consignee details reproduced exactly, in the layout customs expects, and we translate the phytosanitary, veterinary, health and conformity certificates that accompany food, agricultural and regulated goods.

Transport documents, declarations and customs correspondence

Transport documents - the CMR consignment note for road, the SMGS and CIM waybills for rail, the bill of lading for sea, the air waybill, the TIR carnet and the transit declarations - are multilingual by design but carry annotations, reservations and attachments that need translation when a shipment is disputed, damaged or held; customs declarations and their supporting documents are translated for post-clearance audits, for appeals, for the foreign partner's records and for insurers; and customs correspondence - queries, requests for information, classification and valuation decisions, penalty notices and appeals - is translated on the customs office's deadlines. We translate these with staff who know the customs vocabulary of Georgia, the EU, Turkey, the EAEU countries, China and the Gulf, and we provide interpreters for customs inspections, audits and hearings in Tbilisi, Poti and Batumi and at the Georgian-Turkish and Georgian-Azerbaijani borders.

Certification: what customs and tenders accept

Commercial documents are usually accepted as certified translations with our stamp - customs offices, freight forwarders, banks processing letters of credit and most tender committees at the bid stage accept this - while notarized translations are required for tender qualification documents that the tender specifies as notarized, for documents used in customs appeals and court proceedings, and for contracts registered or enforced; apostilles are required where a foreign tender or authority asks for legalized documents. Letters of credit are the exception where exactness matters most: banks examining documents under a letter of credit reject discrepancies of a single character, and we translate the documents presented under a credit against the credit's terms with a second reader checking every field.

Pricing, timing and how to order

Tender files are quoted as a project with a team and a deadline, per page at the commercial or legal tariff depending on the document, with notarization and apostilles itemized; invoices, packing lists, certificates and transport documents are priced at fixed rates per document for standard formats and per page for long ones, with framework rates for regular shippers and forwarders. A tender file is delivered within days of the notice on the tender's deadline; shipment documents within 1-2 hours for a standard set; customs correspondence on the office's deadline.

To order a tender translation, send the notice and the documents as soon as you decide to bid, on email, WhatsApp or Telegram, with the deadline and the tender's certification requirements; we reply within the hour with a fixed quote, a team and a delivery date with margin. For shipment documents, send the set as PDFs and tell us the receiving customs and the trade regime; certified translations are delivered by email within hours, and notarized ones collected at Agmashenebeli 117, near Marjanishvili Metro, or couriered anywhere. Framework agreements with monthly invoicing are available for exporters, importers, forwarders and customs brokers.

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