Know your landed cost before the shipment arrives
Upload the invoice or packing list your supplier sends. Customs Declare classifies the HS code, checks whether a trade agreement lowers your duty, calculates the full landed cost, and prepares your import declaration on your own customs authority's form and language. You review and approve every detail before you submit it.
What actually holds up an import
Paying full duty when a trade agreement would apply
Goods from a supplier's country may qualify for a preferential rate under AfCFTA, USMCA, RCEP, or another of 20 trade agreements -- money you only keep if the rules of origin were actually checked before you paid duty in full.
Landed cost surprises at clearance
Duty, VAT, excise, and any anti-dumping, safeguard, or community-levy charges can add up to well more than the invoice value implies -- and finding that out at the border is the wrong time.
Missing an import permit, license, or inspection requirement
A destination country's own import prohibitions, permits, licensing, and pre-shipment inspection rules are country- and product-specific -- Kenya's PVoC, for one, has to be arranged with a KEBS-appointed agent in the country of origin before the shipment ever leaves, not after it lands.
Missing a CITES import permit
Restricted species or materials need an import permit arranged with the destination country's own CITES authority in advance -- found late, this is a shipment held at the border instead of released.
How Customs Declare helps
Every shipment goes through the same five steps -- upload, classify, validate, review & approve, declare -- so the same checks run whether it's your first import from a corridor or your hundredth, and nothing goes out without your sign-off.
- 1
Upload
Upload an invoice or packing list, send it through the API, or connect a mailbox so emailed documents come in automatically.
- 2
Classify
Each line item is read and matched against the full HS2022 nomenclature to propose an HS code.
- 3
Validate
Checked against rules of origin, CITES-protected species, country-specific import and export licensing and prohibitions, MFN vs. preferential duty rates across 20 trade agreements, and additional charges like community-bloc and vehicle import levies where they apply -- AfCFTA, USMCA, RCEP, the EU, and more.
- 4
Review & approve
You approveEvery declaration comes back to you first -- HS codes, duty figures, every flagged detail. Nothing leaves your workspace until you've reviewed it and explicitly approved it, no matter how confident the automated classification is.
- 5
Declare
Customs Declare produces the completed declaration document for the destination's own form and authority, in that country's required language -- 59 languages supported. You submit it to the customs authority yourself, or hand it to your broker.
A real example: general goods into Kenya
Kenya requires Pre-Export Verification of Conformity (PVoC) for general goods -- inspection and certification by a Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS)-appointed agent in the country of origin, arranged before the shipment leaves, not after it lands. It's easy to miss precisely because it happens on the supplier's end, out of sight of the importer. Customs Declare's country-rules data covers this kind of destination-country requirement for 183 of 193 destinations and flags a match before you approve the declaration.
Import prohibitions, permits, licensing, and pre-shipment inspection requirements are researched and cited for 183 of 193 destination countries, not just the corridors you already know well.
Look up what your own country requires of an import, or compare MFN and preferential duty rates before you commit to an order.