"There is a 5% tolerance" is the kind of thing said confidently in export departments and it is right about a third of the time. UCP 600 Art. 30 is three rules, not one. They cover different things, they are triggered by different conditions, and one of them exists specifically to save a shipment that would otherwise be short, which is precisely the one nobody uses.
Rule one: what "about" buys you
The words "about" or "approximately" used in connection with the amount of the credit or the quantity or the unit price stated in the credit are to be construed as allowing a tolerance not to exceed 10% more or 10% less than the amount, the quantity or the unit price to which they refer.
Ten percent, either direction, and it attaches to whichever figure the word sits next to. "About 500 metric tons" is 450 to 550. "About USD 250,000" is 225,000 to 275,000. "About USD 500 per ton" applies to the unit price and to nothing else.
The word has to actually be there, and it has to be attached to that specific figure. A credit reading "about 500 MT at USD 500 per MT, total USD 250,000" gives you 10% on the quantity, and the total amount is a computed figure that follows the quantity. A credit reading "500 MT, about USD 250,000" gives you 10% on the amount and no leeway on quantity at all, which is a combination that catches people out because it looks generous and is not.
"About" is 10 percent, but only on the figure it is written next to. Check which one that is before assuming it helps.
Rule two: the 5 percent, and its two conditions
A tolerance not to exceed 5% more or 5% less than the quantity of the goods is allowed, provided the credit does not state the quantity in terms of a stipulated number of packing units or individual items and the total amount of the drawings does not exceed the amount of the credit.
This is the one everybody has heard of, and it comes with two conditions that are skipped as often as they are met.
First, it does not apply where the quantity is stated as a number of packing units or individual items. 500 cartons means 500 cartons. 1,000 machines means 1,000 machines. The tolerance exists for goods measured by weight or volume, where a loaded quantity genuinely cannot be hit exactly, not for things you can count.
Second, and this is the condition that actually bites, the total drawn must not exceed the credit amount. So the 5% upward is only usable if the credit amount has room for it. A credit for exactly 500 MT at exactly USD 500 per MT, capped at exactly USD 250,000, permits you to ship 525 MT and to be paid for 500 of them. The tolerance on quantity is real. The money is not there.
Rule three: the 5 percent nobody claims
Even when partial shipments are not allowed, a tolerance not to exceed 5% less than the amount of the credit is allowed, provided that the quantity of the goods, if stated in the credit, is shipped in full and a unit price, if stated in the credit, is not reduced.
Read that carefully, because it is the reverse of what most people expect. This is a tolerance on the amount, downward only, and it exists even where partial shipment is prohibited. You ship the full quantity, you do not cut the unit price, and you draw slightly less than the credit amount. That is compliant.
It is there for rounding, for a quantity that came out marginally under on final weighing, for the ordinary friction of shipping physical goods against a number agreed months earlier. Beneficiaries routinely do not know it exists and treat a small undershoot as a discrepancy requiring a waiver, which hands the applicant a decision it never needed to make.
One limit: this tolerance does not apply when the credit stipulates its own specific tolerance, or when it uses "about" or "approximately" as in Art. 30(a). The rules do not stack.
Drawing up to 5 percent under the credit amount, with the full quantity shipped and the unit price intact, is compliant even when partial shipments are forbidden.
The tolerance question that Art. 30 does not answer
Here is where a lot of practical confusion sits. Art. 30 is about your shipment against the credit: does the quantity you shipped, and the amount you drew, fall inside what the credit permits. It says nothing at all about whether the gross weight on your packing list has to match the gross weight on your bill of lading.
That is a different question under a different article, and the standard is not a percentage.
Data in a document, when read in context with the credit, the document itself and international standard banking practice, need not be identical to, but must not conflict with, data in that document, any other stipulated document or the credit.
"Need not be identical, must not conflict" is a judgement standard, not a threshold. A gross weight of 12,480 kg on one document and 12,485 kg on another does not conflict; it reflects two weighings. A gross weight of 12,480 kg against 15,900 kg conflicts, and no tolerance rule rescues it.
This is genuinely harder to automate than Art. 30, because the correct answer depends on the magnitude and on what kind of figure it is. DocAccord applies a proportional band with a floor and a ceiling to weight comparisons across documents, and reports what it used. The band is a stated assumption about where reasonable measurement variance ends, not a rule from UCP 600, and we say so in the report rather than presenting it as though the ICC had set a number. Anyone claiming a precise legal percentage for cross-document weight consistency is quoting something that does not exist.
Working checklist
- 1Find the quantity, unit price and amount in the credit and note which of them, if any, carries "about" or "approximately".
- 2If the quantity is expressed in packing units or countable items, the Art. 30(b) 5 percent does not exist for you.
- 3Before relying on 5 percent extra quantity, check the credit amount has headroom to pay for it. Usually it does not.
- 4If you are marginally short on amount with the full quantity shipped and the unit price unchanged, check Art. 30(c) before treating it as a discrepancy.
- 5Remember that none of this governs consistency between your own documents. That is Art. 14(d), and it is a conflict test, not a percentage.
This article sets out the rules as we understand them and is not legal advice. What governs is the wording of the specific credit, the applicable ICC rules as in force, and the determination of the examining bank or customs authority in the individual case.