How to Automate Descartes

Descartes carries the filing that releases the cargo

Descartes Systems Group sells logistics software across routing, fleets and global trade. The corner a customs brokerage lives inside is the filing side. The unit of work is an entry: one importer, one shipment, one set of documents, and one electronic message to the government that decides whether the cargo moves or sits.

A brokerage files dozens a day for clients who all do business slightly differently. Inside the software sit the entry summaries, the classifications, the bonds, the commercial invoices and the live status of everything currently in front of Customs. An entry writer builds the file, a licensed broker signs it, and the client desk takes the call when an importer asks where their container is.

The consequences are lopsided, which is why the software matters. A late entry costs a day. A wrong entry is a penalty against a licence that took years to earn.

The entry takes minutes, collecting the paperwork takes days

Building an entry is the skilled part of the job, and it is not what fills the day.

The day goes on asking people for things. The commercial invoice has not arrived, so somebody emails the importer, then emails again on Thursday. A packing list turns up as a photograph of a printout. A new supplier appears with no classification against it, so somebody works one out and puts it in a queue for a second pair of eyes.

Then there is everything with a clock attached. The security filing has to go in before the vessel loads. The importer's continuous bond expires at some point this year, and finding out means logging into the surety's site. Duty falls due on a statement date that does not move. A container gets pulled for examination, and the first place that says so is the terminal's website.

None of it is hard. All of it is an afternoon, and there is one every day.

Descartes

Bonds counted down, not remembered Every importer's continuous bond checked on the surety's own site, with the amount and the expiry on a list that counts down towards the date.

Holds found before the phone rings Open files compared each morning with what the terminal shows, so an examination hold reaches the client desk before the importer hears about it.

One chase email for each importer Every incomplete file turned into a single message naming the exact invoice and packing list still outstanding, instead of forty separate chases.

ABI reaches the government, not the rest of the internet

Descartes is very good at the part it owns, and a brokerage that has not switched all of it on is doing work twice.

Descartes NetCHB is the cloud filing platform connecting brokers to the Automated Broker Interface at Customs and Border Protection, built for volume, including the high-count ecommerce declarations filed under Section 321 Type 86. Descartes OneView Customs House Broker covers the wider ABI set a full-service house needs: security filings, ACE entry summary and cargo release, eBond, in-bond moves, duty drawback claims and the Partner Government Agency messages regulated goods drag behind them. The Descartes Global Logistics Network carries the manifest traffic around all of it, and Descartes QuestaWeb handles foreign trade zone filings.

The pattern is that Descartes is excellent on the wire. Where an electronic interface exists, it fills it, transmits it and reads the answer.

Most of what is left has no wire at all. The invoice you are waiting on is in somebody's inbox. The bond lives on the surety's website. The examination hold shows on the terminal's site. The documents you are chasing sit in the importer's own portal. Each is a screen with a login, and none of them can hand anything to Descartes.

A customs desk that sees the hold before the client does

Nothing on that list is hidden. It is spread across four websites, and each one opens for whoever holds the password.

Every importer's continuous bond checked against the surety's own record, with the amount and expiry on a list that counts down, so a bond about to run short is a note in March rather than a stopped shipment in June. Every open file compared with what the terminal shows, so an examination hold reaches the client desk before the importer phones about it. Every incomplete file turned into one email per importer, naming which invoice and which packing list is missing, instead of forty chases nobody has time to send.

The same reach covers the work that is nobody's job until it is urgent. Statement dates lined up against the duty actually owed. Export records matched against past imports, so drawback candidates surface while they can still be claimed. Continuing education hours for each licensed broker checked against what the agency's portal has recorded.

The line to hold is between preparing and transmitting. Reading a portal and building a list is safe to run unattended. Filing with Customs is a licensed act, so it is left where a broker can read it and sign.

Reading a surety's website takes no licence

Classifying goods and signing an entry is licensed work, and it belongs with the person holding the licence. Finding out whether a bond expires in six weeks is not.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the surety's site, the terminal's page or the importer's document portal, reads what is there, and writes it into the tracker your brokerage already runs on.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it. Anything that transmits to Customs, or tells an importer their shipment is held, is drafted and waits.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names the sites it opens.