BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document
 

Hi there,

We're flying into Canada on Christmas day and have read up that we may need to fill out a BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document? We will be coming as temporary residents so the only things we'll have will be 2 suitcases each full of clothes and a few other things like a laptop, tablet, mobile phones and that's probably about it.

It seems like it wouldn't be worth filling out a form for clothes? Maybe for the electronic items?

Has anyone gone through this before?

Re: BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document
 

I landed as PR with two forms: one for goods accompanying and one for goods to follow.

The goods accompanying form was completely ignored. Anecdotally I hear this is the case most of the time. But if I were you, I'd fill one in anyway. It'll only take a few minutes.

Re: BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document
 

Cheers RGH - did you list each clothing item on there?

Re: BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document
 

No, I just grouped it as 'Clothes'.

You can be very general with your groupings. I did list high-value electronics and their serial numbers individually though.

Re: BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document
 

We landed as temp residents in January- I didn’t bother filling out the specific form but did just have a printed Word document with me outlining what we had as in “clothes” didn’t break it down. We also had a largish box to follow with kitchen stuff in so I included that as well- no one asked to see it. Box came through customs with no issues and was just delivered like any other delivery might be.

Re: BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document
 

No BSF 186 required to be filled out as you are only coming on Study/Work permits. You should prepare a list of goods to follow though if goods will arrive later.
Keep it simple like 5 x boxes of clothing, 3 x boxes kitchenware, 3 x boxes footwear etc etc.

Re: BSF186 – Personal Effects Accounting Document
 

Cheers guys!

That's really useful! We're not going to ship anything over initially as we may want to apply for PR at some point and don't want to hit any snags with dual intent.

Many thanks for the help there!