Customs and Trade Compliance

It is the part of the Captain platform that clears your goods and keeps you compliant, grouped into two suites that share one data feed. The customs suite covers customs brokerage software, customs clearance software, customs duty software, and customs compliance. The trade suite covers trade compliance software and duty drawback. Instead of a clearance system from one vendor, a duty calculator from another, and a screening tool from a third, you get one login where entries, duty figures, classifications, and screening all read from the same record. The defining feature is that Captain is operated by licensed customs brokers on the CargoTrans desk, so the software structures the work and keeps the file while a licensed professional makes and owns the filing.

Yes. The customs suite, including brokerage, clearance, duty, and compliance, is operated by licensed customs brokers on the CargoTrans desk, not by software alone. The trade suite, covering trade compliance and duty drawback, is backed by specialists who work the same records. This matters because customs and trade decisions carry legal weight. A classification, a valuation, or a drawback claim needs a licensed professional standing behind it, not just a screen that accepts whatever you type. In Captain, the software structures the work and keeps the record, and the licensed team makes and owns the filings. Your reasonable care file is built inside the platform as goods move, so it is ready for an audit rather than reconstructed under pressure afterward.

They overlap but answer different questions. Customs brokerage software is about the filing itself: preparing and submitting the ISF and the entry, managing the entry record, and having a licensed broker own it. Customs clearance software is about the movement through the process: tracking a shipment from arrival to release, posting each CBP milestone, and flagging holds and exams early so a release does not slip. In practice your entry is filed in the brokerage module and its progress is watched in the clearance module, but because they share one record there is no gap between them. They have separate pages because some clients focus on who files their entries while others focus on how fast goods clear.

The duty module ties each HTS classification to the duty rate it drives and computes duty at the time of entry, so the figure is known before the invoice, not discovered after. It layers in the components that make up landed cost, such as duty, applicable Section 301 tariffs and exclusions, fees, and freight, so you see the real cost of a purchase rather than just the product price. Because the module shares data with clearance and compliance, the classification that drives the duty is the same one on the entry and in your care file. That consistency is the point: the number you plan against, the number you file, and the number you are audited on are the same number.

No. The suite is modular, so you license only what solves a problem you have today and add the rest later. An importer with heavy clearance work might start with brokerage and clearance, then add the duty module for landed-cost planning. A company with re-exports might add duty drawback to recover duty it is currently leaving on the table. Because every module already lives on the same platform and login, adding one later is a configuration step, not a new implementation project or a migration. There is no rip-and-replace and no second vendor to onboard, which is the opposite of buying separate clearance, duty, and screening tools that each need their own contract and integration.

Duty drawback lets you recover duty already paid on goods that are later exported or destroyed, and the module tracks it from the same import and export records the rest of Captain already holds. As shipments are re-exported, eligible goods are flagged, and claims are built from the matching import entries rather than assembled from scratch in a separate spreadsheet. Because the data lives on one platform, the link between the duty you paid on import and the goods you later exported is already there, which is usually the hardest part of a drawback program. The result is that recoverable duty is claimed instead of quietly forfeited, and the supporting records are ready if the claim is reviewed.

The trade compliance module screens the parties and details of a shipment before it moves. That includes denied-party and sanctions screening against restricted lists, export and import license checks where they apply, classification, and country-of-origin review. Because the screening runs on the same record as your entry and shipment data, a red flag is caught at booking rather than after the goods have shipped and a violation has already happened. Licensed trade specialists back the module, so a difficult classification or a borderline screening result gets a professional judgment, not just an automated pass or fail. The screening decisions are logged, so the record shows not only the result but the review behind it.

They connect because the whole Captain platform reads from one data model. An entry filed in the customs module is tied to the shipment the control tower is tracking and the inventory the warehouse module expects. So a container that is held in clearance shows on the visibility feed at the same time, and duty calculated in the customs module is the same figure your landed-cost and warehouse views use. This shared record is the reason a classification question or a drawback claim is answered from the feed your operators already work in, rather than a separate compliance system that reconciles against the others overnight. Adding a customs or trade module extends the same picture instead of opening another silo.

It depends on how many modules you turn on and how clean your item and classification data is. Brokerage and clearance can be live in a few weeks once your entries, item master, and trading partners are connected. Adding duty, compliance, trade screening, and drawback takes longer because each has classification logic, valuation rules, and screening lists to configure. Because the modules already share one platform, adding each one is configuration rather than a fresh implementation. The usual gate is not our setup work but how quickly your product and classification data can be validated, so we front-load that in onboarding and bring brokerage and clearance live first to start clearing goods quickly.