Electronic Filing

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 Customs entry at the destination port.

Example data elements include Harmonized Schedule (HS) code, 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, Customs broker or others. Collecting, validating and packaging these data elements in the proper format is a manually intensive and 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

How Amber Road Can Help

Amber Road's trade specialists and network of In-Country Content Providers (ICCP) analyze all required data elements for pre-Customs entry transactions. 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

With accurate pre-Customs information from Global Knowledge^®, Amber Road ensures companies are reducing Customs delays, improving global trade processes and trimming Customs broker costs.