Automate your Customs Operations

CAS is connected in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium. Next to these, we support some specific flows in Poland, Germany and France. 

With CAS, Mizuno has only seen a reduction in the cost compared to using a freight forwarder. They did an exercise in which they worked out the average cost per declaration within CAS as opposed to what they were paying a freight forwarder and worked out that they would be saving about 66% on declaration costs.

To add to that, the greatest cost is potential non-compliance with fines that could apply if declarations are non-compliant.

From a product point of view if you’re creating exports and using PDFs from suppliers for that data, CAS doesn’t currently have an OCR for scanning documents. The idea of transforming and automating the customs process is to move away from those old ways of having forms and PDFs. Unfortunately some people cannot move away from these old ways, but then an alternative is the Excel template that can be completed and used to upload data in the system.

CAS uses a subscription model based on the declaration volume, flows required and extra options included, such as Special Procedures. Based on these different parameters, when all details are clear, a price estimation will be made.

Absolutely, with our APIs the connection between CAS and your ERP system can be easily established.

Most air freight services provide a customs filing service, however, the customer can select to complete their own customs formalities. For example, with FedEx you would select Broker Select or equivalent in their shipping manager and provide the declarant details.

Mizuno took their time to establish the correct dataset and test their flows in detail. The project from start to go live took about a year, but a lot of that time was taken by getting their authorisations in place and granted by the customs authorities. With regards to the data, setting up the customs flows, configuration in decision tables, they had to cleanse a lot of their data, so it took them longer than expected and other companies could probably move quicker. They would recommend to calculate approximately 6 months from start to go live, to really be able to get the set up and data quality right, without the authorisation requests. This enables you to get it right from the start and get way less errors back when you go live.

To give more insights on the range needed for the implementation time: another customer with a standard import / export flow took only 4 weeks from the start of the project to go live.

Of course, the time to structure your data and the length of the testing phase depends on the number and complexity of the flows (including Special Procedures or not) you are implementing in CAS, as well as the capacity and timing of the customer. Some projects take a month from start to go live, while others might take up to a year.

Mizuno’s ERP system doesn’t generate the actual system/commercial invoice until the shipment has actually left. That’s why they use proforma invoices. It’s a huge time saver, with the proforma invoices being produced within the system and saves the export team to produce any invoices manually. It is allowed in the UK.

CAS has built in validation errors that will generate an alert when data is missing and/or not structured correctly. With these alerts, you will be notified to correct the data before it gets submitted to the respective customs authorities.

Mizuno has a relatively small customs team, including 4 people. It’s not a case of needing more resources, it’s about re-training your current resources. You don’t need huge amount of resources to be supporting automation of customs operations.

People see the large volume of resource that customs brokers have and they have the assumption that if they take customs operations in-house they would also need this big pool of people to manage it. In practice, it’s the opposite: you will reduce the number of resources or be able to have them to focus on more strategical topics.

Most fast parcel operators allow you to inform them that you will be handling the customs formalities yourself. This is usually done through their shipping manager tools.

The data requirements depend on the flows that are applicable to your situation (which customs procedures in which country) and will be discussed thoroughly during the sales and onboarding process.

The data should be available from the customer’s side since they need it to lodge declarations, whether they use a software solution or a customs broker. The data requirements will be shared and discussed during the sales and onboarding process.

Additionally, there is always the possibility to add missing data elements into a customs shipment manually. So, you can ingest as much information available in your system and add missing data elements via the CAS User Interface or via the configuration in decision tables.

Currently, the integration of CAS for direct filing in the Scandinavian region is not part of our roadmap.

Within the Master Data module, you can set up all your items with their respective descriptions and commodity codes. When you then send a shipment to CAS for these items, CAS will pull the description and commodity codes from the Master Data information. Moreover, CAS checks the validity of the commodity codes regularly, making sure you are only entering valid commodity codes for your goods. However, CAS is not a classification tool so it cannot help you classify your products.

Yes we have brokers using CAS to automate parts of their operation.

In order to file a German export declaration with CAS no explicit authorisation is needed. The only thing you will need is an EORI number. To be able to file an export declaration without presenting the goods at the local customs office, you will need to obtain the approved exporter (zugelassener Ausführer) authorisation from German customs.