little-beauty

Guys

Having landed last month, I dazzled the customs lady with these forms - she *loved* them They were assessed by the officer very speedily, as the listings were sorted in descending order of value with the grand totals.

Why did I do this? We had all our goods listed on a spreadsheet and there was no chance, I'd be hand-writing all this information into 20 odd pages.

*Boring part* - the .pdfs from the CIC's website were converted into .jpgs and embedded into a powerpoint document. Text boxes were set up in the correct location on top of the .jpg. The goods were listed separately in an Excel spreadsheet and were pasted across as PLAIN TEXT. Duplicate slides can be added, as you require additional pages.

I've attached Powerpoint examples of the Goods To Follow and the Goods Accompanied list. Feel free to use, if you're confident with such packages, as mentioned above - use at your own risk (obviously).

Ciao

Little-B.

little-beauty

...hmm. That .zip appears to be corrupt. I'm reattaching it to this message.

LB.

little-beauty

Nice. Still corrupt. Can any more experienced members advise how to get a .zip attached without issue, to a thread?

Thanks.

LB.

Canredy

I saved the zip file to my hard drive first and then opened it with no problems. It unzips to a PowerPoint file.


little-beauty: thanks for that. The Excel spreadsheet with my Goods-to-Follow list is already over 300 items and we haven't even started on the garage contents yet! I was dreading the hand-copying process as well.

Why the CBSA doesn't publish this as a Fillable .pdf is beyond me.

escape

Help, I saved to desktop and tried to open, but no luck, what am I doing wrong? I'm desperate for something like this, thanks.

dozzzzy

Hi Little-B,

I started converting the PDF's directly here is my attempt.

I have tarted them up a little, with tool-tip type hints, so they should be ready for general consumption. If there are any major problems with them please let me know and I'll try and fix, don't want to spend my whole life supporting these, but I'll try and sort out major problems.

Dozzzzy

peterb

On a slightly separate note, I landed in August at Vancouver. I presented our list of goods to follow much as you have. I was told by the customs guy that the system had changed and he did not stamp our lists. He merely said we should arrange through our shippers to have them clear customs when the goods follow.

I have since tried to discover what the change in the system is, and cannot, and our moving agents merely assure me that they will list the goods as they pack them, and they will clear customs on their "door to door" removal as they promised.

Any comments?

peterb

Biiiiink

Mr B landed with a completed B4/B4a - the officer had obviously never seen someone use the form before and was mystified as to where we'd got it from. She made him (me) rewrite the entire top sheet as we'd put a UK address instead of a Canadian one. Asking if we couldn't just cross it out seemed to confuse her no end. The top sheet she gave us to rewrite was not a B4, which confused me! She totted the value up, disappeared and came back with a blue computer-printed front sheet stapled on to our bundle. That was that.

I went through the same airport, different terminal, as a returning resident some months later with completed B4/4a in hand. Went to customs, had to interrupt 3 young male officers who were sprawled across the benches chatting. As I approached they were saying "Hey, why are you here? Too much shopping was it?" and trying to guess what crime could have had me directed to the customs screening section. I said no, returning resident, could he please do my goods to follow list for me. He picked up a rubberstamp and without looking down at one single page, not one glance, he stamped every page whilst still chatting to his mates. Mr B said "Oh, no blue sheet this time?" and the guy said they "nah, you're Canadian, we don't need to bother with you"...chatted about the kid's "funny accent" (nice touch for a government employee in an international airport to be commenting on foreign accents!) and we were done.

Then when picking up the container at Winnipeg customs some months after that, we presented our two lists. The guy said 2 lists was not allowed, he could only do one, so we gave mine which was more complete. He looked at the rubber stamping and shook his head, asked us what happened, why had we only got stamps? He muttered, said that was not the correct procedure and he'd be putting in a complaint about the guy who rubber stamped us, and arranging for a memo to go out reminding people of the correct procedure.

Not sure that this answers your question, just wanted to make the point that the officers themselves aren't sure what the regulations and procedures are... stamping seems to be bad, blue sheet seems to be good. I have no idea what no stamping at all is!!

Biiiiink

Karma for you I can't open them but I'm sure PeeCee users will appreciate them no end!

little-beauty

Dozzzzy - nice work!! Copying and pasting lengthy Excel data is a bit tricky with Adobe though. Can one use these without having to type into them manually?

Escape - what error message do you get when you try to unzip them on your workstation?

LB.

Canredy

Now I've got a question on the content of the form itself. When providing the Value of the item or box of goods (in Canadian dollars of course), do you put

(1) the replacement cost or
(2) the actual depreciated value

E.g. my 5-year-old color TV. It would cost me $350 to replace it today...probably paid $400 for it 5 years ago. But if I sold it in a garage sale or on Craig's List or donated it to Good Will, it would be "worth" $50 at best.

So do I list the value as $400, $350, or $50?

Tangram

Sorry for being thick but looked on CIC site and cannot for the life of me find the B4 forms... anyone kindly provide a link ?

Cheers.

dozzzzy

Above in this thread are the forms I converted into a pdf fillable form or you could look here for the original form b4 and here for b4a

Dozzzzy

Canredy

Actually the CIC is not relevant to the Goods Lists...it's the Canada Border Services Agency (CSBA). Their home page is here: http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/menu-e.html

As far as landing goes, there are
Immigration (CIC) and Customs (CSBA)

...and eventually after you're an official Resident, Taxes (CRA).

Canredy

Dozzzy: thanks so much for your effort on these. I used them over the weekend to compile my final lists...landing is TODAY!

One problem I did encounter...on the B4E form, the item descriptions can be entered just fine, but when you move the "focus" to another area of the form, what you just entered turns all fuzzy, like it's being rendered twice in not quite the same place. Prints this way too, unfortunately.

I used your form for the B4 and reverted to little-beauty's .ppt slide for the B4Es (all 20 pages of them!). Sheesh we have a lot of stuff. :scared: But it's now documented very precisely in case of insurance claims, etc.