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Customs Entry


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Entry Management Issues and Challenges
As a purchase order is confirmed by a supplier and prepared to be shipped to the buyer, a great deal of information about the shipment must be consolidated and properly formatted to facilitate a successful entry at the destination port.

Example data elements include HS number, product weights and dimensions, product costs, shipping instructions, vessel number, port codes, country of origin, etc. These various data elements come from the different parties involved in the transaction: supplier, carrier, importer, forwarder, broker, or others. Collecting, validating, and packaging these data elements in the proper format is a daunting task.

Invariably, data elements are late or missing, re-keying errors occur, duties are improperly calculated, etc. In cases where countries require advanced security notifications - such as the Importer Security Filing (ISF) in the US - these issues result in delaying the shipment's entry to the port. In other cases, goods are detained at Customs, where brokers scramble to collect missing or inaccurate data to facilitate clearance and release of the goods.
Challenges include:
▪ Sending shipment data to the broker without introducing errors
▪ Filtering and transmitting large volumes of transaction data in an acceptable format to Customs
via a broker
▪ Reincorporating the data received from Customs through the broker back into the system
▪ Responding in a timely fashion to messages or requests from Customs to prevent delays in clearance
▪ Extracting and submitting certain data elements to authorities prior to arrival at the port of entry
▪ Using all available information to calculate final landed cost

Entry Management Automation

How Amber Road Can Help
Amber Road's import solutions provide comprehensive support for entry processes. An important aspect of this support comes from a pre-Customs entry transaction. In this process, the system analyzes and assembles information from the purchase order, shipment notification and commercial invoice and assembles it into a pre-Customs entry.

The pre-Customs entry is an intelligent compilation of transaction information both for internal accounting and auditing purposes and for external parties. The process of creating and validating the pre-Customs entry involves multiple steps, including:

▪ Running business rules that determine which data is pulled into the pre-Customs entry
▪ Performing an admissibility review on each line item in the shipment
▪ Validating that required data is present
▪ Normalizing and converting data across currencies, units of measure, etc.
▪ Calculating accurate duties and taxes for actual landed cost

Once validated, the pre-Customs entry contains the final version of cleansed and relevant data for the shipment. A further, configurable process extracts the specific data that the broker will need to facilitate Customs filing and converts it to XML. The system packages the XML, along with PDFs of generated forms, license certificates and supporting documents, and sends it to the broker electronically, thereby reducing errors caused by rekeying data.
Features Benefits

Pre-Customs Entry

 ▪ Compile all necessary detail from the commercial invoice, ASN, and purchase order
▪ Validate data against importer's product records
▪ Screen for regulatory compliance and internal vendor approvals
▪ Tabulate the Customs transactional values
▪ Calculate actual landed cost
▪ Validate and prepare the Importer Security Filing (ISF)

Broker Packet

 ▪ Consolidate the pre-Customs entry to provide the data needed for filing
▪ Convert it to the appropriate XML format
▪ Include generated forms, license certificates and supporting documents
▪ Schedule the transmission of the broker packet
▪ Revise or cancel a broker packet

 

Importer Security Filing
Import Management Software

Legget & Pratt
Bunzl
Pfizer

Panasonic
"Amber Road's Trade Import solution has simplified Panasonic's import transactions by integrating critical global shipping information into our systems in real-time. As a result, we have started to achieve end-to-end visibility of our entire supply chain."
Group Manager, Panasonic Logistics