Before dispatch, the customs specialist checks every line item against four sources, and again in the audit a year later.
The commercial invoice comes from sales, the tariff codes are in the item master, and the declaration is created in ATLAS. For every line item, someone checks whether description, code, origin and value match. If the auditor asks the following year, the derivation has to be pieced together all over again.
18line itemsThe commercial invoice for a shipment to Basel lists 18 line items.
4sources per line itemItem master, commercial invoice, export declaration and proof of preferential origin must all say the same thing.
2disputed classificationsTwo line items are assemblies whose tariff code does not follow from the item description.
2 hrssearching for documents in the auditFor every line item queried, the derivation is pieced together again a year later.
For the shipment to Basel, the customs specialist only has to read the three flagged line items closely and can skim the fifteen that are backed by sources: that is the 50% reduction in checking effort.
The 50% reduction in checking effort is this agent's headline figure. Eighteen invoice line items with two disputed classifications represent a typical export shipment and do not come from a survey.