Everything SCMTR.io does, from the BL on your desk to customs’ answer

No looking an IMO number up somewhere else first. Because vessel names are reused between ships, it shows every hull known by that name with the port and date customs holds for each, so you confirm yours against the document in your hand. Ships customs has seen at Indian ports come first; where a hull is too new to appear anywhere else, public ship registers are searched as well, and if it still cannot be found the platform points you at where to look up the number. A ship the registers hold but publish no IMO number for — a barge, a coastal trader — is reported as exactly that, by name with its flag and MMSI, and filed as a non-IMO vessel in one click rather than sent back as “not found”. The same box takes a VCN, and answers it from the voyages already fetched. And because a ship prepared for weeks ahead can be substituted before it arrives, the call your filing names is checked against customs’ own list again — when you reopen the draft, at the review step, and before you sign — with the current call one click away and your number never changed for you. After it has gone, the filing’s page says whether customs still lists that call, and the platform keeps reading the list and writes to you if it drops off — or if customs moves that call’s expected arrival day. Calls still to come are listed first, soonest first, each marked with how far off it is; calls that have already arrived follow, greyed, so last voyage’s number is never the obvious one to pick. And when the port has not issued the VCN yet — it is issued days before arrival, not months — say so and continue: the draft is saved, the rest of the filing is filled in, and the VCN stays the one thing outstanding until you enter it.

A three-step intake shows what ICEGATE returned, what it will write into your filing, and what it could not map, before anything is changed. It answers for the voyage — ship, ports, bill numbers, containers — not for your cargo: the carrier never sees the house bills under their master, so your consignor, consignee and HS code are not theirs to return. And because it reads the arrival manifest, which is filed at or near arrival, it is at its most useful as a check after filing rather than on a blank draft — including as the signal that your own amendment window has closed.

A line above every step shows the master, its containers and which house bill each is on, so you always know which bill you are describing. The rail shows what is still outstanding on each step without blocking your way forward, anything it can fill in it fills in with a stated reason, and the full form is one click away from every step — and the trip back is too: the same filing moves between guided steps and the full form freely, and a draft always reopens in whichever view you last worked in. Filed a few already? Switch Guidance to Compact, on the steps or the full form: every explanation moves behind an ⓘ, each box shrinks to the value it holds, and whole sections sit side by side across a wide monitor — warnings and errors still show.

The first screen asks one plain question — how many shipping bills does this B/L cover? One is a straight bill, which names that shipping bill’s PCIN. Several is a consolidation: the master names no PCIN, because customs issues it an MCIN, and each shipping bill gets its own line with its own PCIN and its own containers ticked off the B/L, typing only its share. A shipping bill with no house B/L of its own takes its number and date with one tick. A third answer, since 26 September 2026: the shipping line’s B/L referenced only — the master carries its reference, the line’s PAN and the totals, and each shipping bill is a line with its own PCIN, its own destination and its own sea leg, the shape customs accepted on 22 September. What an export cannot have otherwise is filled and locked with the reason beside it — cargo type EX, the foreign port of discharge as both destination and port of receipt, the itinerary’s sea leg — and an inland start from an ICD is one question. Every check is tied to the code customs answers with, and blocks before you send: a straight bill with no PCIN (159), one PCIN used twice (383/384), an Indian port as the destination or port of receipt (286/365), a leg that ends where it began (091), a line listing none of the B/L’s containers (239 and 381), packages that do not add up (709, 221, 225), a net weight of zero (053), and EX filed with LC instead of TC (115). The last screen lists them as “What customs checks on an export”, each line clear or naming what is wrong — the same findings that decide whether the filing can go, so a tick never disagrees with the button. The same checklist reads an export file dropped on the inspector, and heads the full form’s issue list. Paste the bill of lading or drop its PDF and the export’s fields fill, with the shipping bill number it names offered — never a PCIN, which no bill of lading carries. The rules come from exports customs accepted in September 2026 and the refusals filed beside them: a small base, stated as such. Two accepted shapes the guided steps cannot show open in the full form instead of being rewritten: a master filed referenced only (R), and a line naming its PCIN under Supplementary declaration rather than Previous declaration — both counted as a PCIN named, both still held to naming each shipping bill once.

Nothing you have already typed is overwritten. Ports are shown as code and name together so you can check them against the document. The ship and voyage number are reported rather than written into the filing — the message wants an IMO and a VCN that no bill of lading carries — but the ship’s name goes straight into the finder above and the search runs, so a paste ends with a list of real hulls to pick yours from rather than a name to retype.

What the bills leave out — which CFS, a consignee’s PAN — is asked on one page, no sign-in, and the checklist follows the moment you answer. A person approves it here and the draft CSN opens with the bills docked beside it. Switched on per organisation and per person.

The GSTIN inside it settles three fields exactly — the state code the message wants is its first two digits and the PAN is its middle ten — alongside the name, street, postcode, country, IEC, phone and email. Paste the master and the house and the pair does more: it lists where the two documents disagree, separating a difference in notation from a difference in fact, and identifies the consolidator both of them name. Without a GSTIN it still finds the city, state, PIN or ZIP and country at the end of the address, in whatever order the bill prints them.

Pounds are deliberately left alone: the message has no code for them, and quietly converting would change the declared weight.

Confirm it and that ship is findable by name from then on — for you and for everyone else in your organisation. A name you confirm outranks anything learned automatically and is never overwritten, so a correction you make stays made.

Learnt from every filing you send, download or have accepted.

Honest from the first load, because a filing is assembled over days as shipment details arrive — it is a checklist, not a verdict. And it follows the file out of the door: Sign & upload refuses a filing with a red problem outstanding — an amber one is marked amber on its field and does not stop it — and Download JSON, Copy JSON and every e-mail door say what customs would refuse before the file leaves — in the dialog, in the message and on the page its link opens — so nobody files a copy believing it is ready.

The two are checked against each other box by box — beside the cell, under the house bill, and on the review screen with the sums written out and a tick or a cross — so a house bill that contradicts the master is caught before customs catches it, including the case a bill-level total cannot see: two boxes with their figures interchanged. Leave the master’s figures blank and they are added up from the shares, a shared box counted once; a bill alone in a box takes the master’s figure as its share rather than asking for it twice. Two house bills in one container is two ticks on the same row, never an eleven-character number retyped on a second screen.

In the guided steps the master carries a route for all its house bills — port of loading, first port of entry, final destination, next port of unlading, inland transport (rail or road), transhipper and item type — typed once, and every house bill starts with it and says so under the field. Send one bill to a different ICD on that bill’s own page and only that bill changes, marked as changed for this bill only with one click to put it back; the bills after it keep the route rather than following the exception, and the master step lists which bills have a destination of their own. The transhipper travels with the destination, so a bill sent elsewhere is asked for its own, one sent into an SEZ is asked for none, and changing the route’s own destination takes its transhipper off with it, with one click to keep it. Change the route later and every bill you have not changed follows, on a draft reopened days later as much as in the same sitting. The route is yours, not customs’: the master is filed exactly as accepted consolidations file it.

The platform fills both in from which bills carry the box and locks the house bills’ LCL on a shared box, where it is a certainty. The master’s status is FCL until you change it on the master, and no house bill changes it for you; where a lone house bill says otherwise, both sides say so and one click takes it across — so the one filing in a hundred with a genuinely part-full box is still yours to declare.

A transposed pair is caught while you are looking at the box, with the digit it should have been — not weeks later by customs, and never as a block, because real shipper-owned and non-ISO equipment legitimately has no valid number.

The lists answer locally and fall through to DGFT and UNECE when they cannot, caching whatever comes back for the next filer. Inland depots and SEZs answer to the short name on your paperwork as well as the full registered description customs files them under — “Khurja ICD” and “Dahej SEZ” find their codes, and so do operator names that have since changed hands. Every row of a port list says what kind of place it is — PORT, ICD, CFS, SEZ, an inland station, a land border or AIR — with sea locations first, so four codes that all say Bangalore can be told apart; the first port of entry offers sea gateways only, and says why when an inland name finds nothing. Countries answer to the name the trade uses rather than to two letters you have to know — Vietnam, UAE, South Korea, Turkey, Ivory Coast, Czech Republic and Holland all land on the right code, accents and ampersands included, and UK answers the United Kingdom rather than Ukraine.

That is not hypothetical. ICEGATE failed a whole file by email over one 74-character street address in a field that takes 70, and no ACK ever came for it. The same lengths size the field: a two-character state code no longer occupies the same box as a 512-character goods description, and a block of thirty fields reads as a form rather than a wall.

So every field converts as you type or paste: curly quotes and apostrophes become straight ones, long dashes become hyphens, a non-breaking space becomes an ordinary one and É becomes E, while the few characters that carry meaning are spelled out rather than dropped — µ as U, ± as PLUS/MINUS, ₹ as RS, € as EUR, £ as GBP, © as (C), ® as (R). A value that arrives another way is checked instead: a character that could not be read at all is red, because the file it came from was not UTF-8; any other character outside plain text is amber, because no accepted filing carries one and none has been seen rejected either. And a file made anywhere can be dropped on SCMTR JSON upload, which lists every such character by line and column, with the field it sits in and what to type instead — the line is the one ICEGATE’s rejection email names.

The consignee’s country starts as IN, a party code is checked against the shape its type promises (PAN, IEC or GSTIN), and the house B/L date is asked for rather than copied from the master.

Each house bill shows which of its parties still match the master and offers to copy the consignor down rather than have you retype it, and the container agent follows the master’s consolidator — including when the consolidator PAN is corrected after the containers were added, on a reopened draft as much as in the same sitting.

It is printed nowhere on the bill of lading, and there is no public register to look it up in. So pick the shipping line printed on the bill — kept with your draft to choose the PAN, and never sent to customs — and the PAN fills from a routing table for your port and destination, saying whose PAN it is and following if the destination changes; where the table names an agent whose PAN it does not hold, it says so and asks for it rather than offering the line’s own. The rows that name an agent come from one working filer and have not been checked with customs — no filing on those routes exists to check them against — while for fourteen lines the PAN fills on every other route from the one their own accepted filings carry, marked confirmed, and for six of them customs’ public record shows the line’s own declaration under that PAN, so the note reads as customs records it. A PAN you typed yourself is never replaced. The field also searches by the line’s name: the PANs your own organisation has filed come first, with how often, then the PAN accepted filings carry for the line, then a reference list of about thirty lines marked plainly as not yet confirmed with customs. Pick one and the container agent codes follow it. A master filed on its own keeps a plain PAN field, because there the PAN is yours.

That table is read here, so the pair that matters is checked before the file goes: import cargo takes local clearance, domestic transit or movement to an ICD and never foreign transhipment, which belongs to transhipment and export cargo. When a pair is one the guide lists nowhere, the form says so and names what the cargo type you chose does allow, at the level — master or house bill — that the rule applies at, because they differ. The other two of the four are a judgement about the bill rather than a rule, so they explain a rejection instead of causing one — except where the table rules a combination out outright, which it does for eleven of them. An export house bill carrying no prior declaration is one of the eleven, and a common one: an export consignment always refers to something, because the shipping bill behind it exists before the bill of lading does. The form says so before the file goes, and names what the table does list instead — S where the house bill covers one shipping bill, B where several are consolidated under it.

CONCOR is one company and a different bond number at Nhava Sheva, Mundra and Chennai — so copying the pair from an earlier filing gives you a correct PAN and a bond from the wrong place, on a filing that looks complete. Pick the operator and both fields fill from the port you are actually filing at. Rail operators and CFSs are offered together, because either can be the one moving your cargo, and a facility registered at several stations is never guessed at: it says how many bonds are on file and asks which is yours. And it says when the block is expected at all: the same published table lists a transhipper on every consignment reported for the first time that moves onward under bond — to an ICD, or out of India — and on none that clears at the port it lands in, so a bonded movement with the pair left empty is pointed out rather than filed in silence. It is said as a note, never a block: the field table makes the whole block optional, and nothing is stopped. Two cases where the block is rightly empty are said as such rather than raised: cargo going into an SEZ, which moves onward like an ICD move but names no transhipper at all; and the master of a consolidation, whose house bills carry the transhipper while the master’s own block stays blank — so an amendment that finds it blank names what the house bills carry instead of inviting a second, contradicting transhipper on the master. The bond also follows the station the box was landed at: a Chennai CFS files one bond for cargo landed at Chennai and another for cargo landed at Kattupalli or Ennore and moved to it — five CFSs, fourteen accepted filings — so the picker looks the bond up for the port you report at and offers the CFS your cargo is going to first, and at Chennai and Kolkata, where every accepted CFS delivery names the CFS as its own transhipper, that pair is filled in for you.

Search by the CFS’s name instead: the facilities at your filing’s own port come first, the rest stay reachable, and anything you enter is explained back to you in words so a ten-character code is never left unread. At Nhava Sheva and Mundra, where no operator list has reached us, the CFS codes customs has accepted on real filings are offered by code, each saying its operator’s name is not on record yet.

Your token asks for its PIN as it does anywhere else, the private key never leaves it, and the signature is verified against those exact frozen bytes before anything reaches customs. The Signer never sees the declaration, only a 32-byte fingerprint of it, and it signs for scmtr.io and nothing else. If several certificates are present you are asked which, with each one’s holder, issuer and dates shown, because signing with the wrong DSC is only caught by customs hours later. And if your IT department will not allow the install, the platform hands you the frozen file to sign on ICEGATE’s own portal and bring back — the file name alone is a rejection reason, and one you never meet here. Before your token is asked for, the platform asks customs’ record what the line has filed for every master B/L on the CSN and compares the two field by field: a difference on a field customs has refused filings for (the B/L date, packages, container count, load status) needs a reason of your own before the send goes, and a difference on any other field pauses you and never stops you. If the master B/L’s PDF is on file the CSN is held against that too — read it right there if it is not. And nothing leaves for ICEGATE until a screen names the filing and you tick it: a double-click, a stray Enter or an old tab cannot file for you.

If ICEGATE rejects the upload itself, the filing says so at once. Then, since 22 September 2026, an acceptance reaches the filing on its own: customs’ public record began publishing the CSN number and date in September 2026, and the platform reads it for every waiting filing about every fifteen minutes — when it names your very transmission, yours is the only filing of your organisation on that bill and the record’s containers and packages agree with what was sent, the CSN number and date are recorded and the filing turns accepted, marked in its history as read from customs’ record. A rejection never appears on that record: it arrives at your registered ICEGATE email address as a file ending in _ACK, and dropping it on the filing records every rejected field, explained against what was sent. Keep the ACK for an acceptance too — it is customs’ own file, and dropped on a filing already accepted from the record it is kept as the transmission’s own answer. A filing made directly on the ICEGATE portal is recorded from its ACK the same way, by any team member; and the filing’s own page can read the CSN number off customs’ record on the spot rather than waiting for the next sweep.

So every filing is fingerprinted when it is frozen for signing: once on the exact bytes your signature covers, and once on the shipment with the control number, job number and date removed, which is what a file regenerated rather than corrected looks like. An upload that has already gone and is still unanswered is rejected before it leaves, with the earlier one named and one click to open it; one customs has already accepted points you at an amendment, which is the only route customs will take. A rejected filing is never in the way — a 700 included, since a rejection leaves nothing of yours at customs, and every 700 on record here — seven of them — was accepted the same day when it was sent again. And if you know better than we do, you can send it anyway by saying why, and the reason is kept with the filing. When an upload leaves and no answer comes back, the filing says exactly that rather than reading as a failure: locked, marked as sent because that is the safer assumption, with no tracking number claimed — and the platform then reads customs’ own record until the doubt is settled for you. Filings leave at a steady pace, and if uploads stop completing they are held for a few minutes with the one thing that matters said plainly: nothing was sent, and your signed file is unchanged.

Files made here do the same, so the reply is recognisable: customs names its acknowledgement after the control number, and an accepted amendment on record here came back named after a number that appeared nowhere in the filer’s own records. Amendments and deletions included: customs accepted an amendment carrying its job number on the very day its CSN was granted under the same number, so the app sets it for you and there is nothing to edit. The one exception is a second amendment of the same job on the same day, where the file takes a number of its own. A refusal does not use a number up, so filing again after one keeps yours. A file made in other software can be dropped on SCMTR JSON upload, which says when its numbers disagree, for a CSN and a shipping line filing alike — as a note, never a refusal, because customs does take those files.

The control number on this file was already used on this job date — the note names the filing that used it and what came of it, since customs does not process one control number twice on a job date. Customs’ record already lists a CSN accepted under your PAN on this master B/L — so a fresh CSN would be a second copy rather than the amendment you may mean, and a second accepted copy has to be settled with a customs officer. A third note comes earlier, beside the bill number as you type it, and again at Sign & upload: another organisation using SCMTR has already sent a CSN on the same master B/L at the same port — how many, and whether customs accepted theirs, never who. Two filings on one master are usually the line and the console agent, so that one stops nothing either; it links to customs’ own record, so you see what the bill already carries before yours is the later one.

The shipping line’s manifest closes less: since ICES Advisory 37/2026 (18 September 2026) an amendment still goes through after it, with the line’s own manifest amendment to follow, while a deletion becomes the customs officer’s and a fresh CSN is no longer the route. Before the manifest a deletion is your own, and since ICES Advisory 38/2026 (21 September 2026) customs says it may be followed by a re-file of corrected particulars — amendment remains the lighter route, and no such re-file has yet been seen accepted from customs’ side. Every route into a filing checks first: the guided steps and the full form alike, as you type the bill number, an imported JSON file before you build a draft on it, and the filing itself, which says plainly what it still allows and whose filing changed that. The check reads customs’ own record of accepted CSNs, which answers days before the shipping line’s SAM exists. And it keeps watching after you file: if the other party’s accepted filing disagrees with yours on the fields customs cross-checks, you are emailed the exact differences while the window is still open — not told by a rejection after it shuts. A submission that would be rejected is stopped before it goes, rather than sent to find out.

If that day changes for the call your filing names — on a draft or on a filing already sent — the platform keeps the day it moved from rather than overwriting it, emails you once with both days, and marks the row on your CSN filing list Arrival moved; the filing’s page shows the ETA with the day it moved from and when. Nothing needs amending, because the CSN carries no arrival date, and the call is still the same call. One honest note: nobody has yet seen customs revise an expected arrival day, so this is watching for something unproven — built partly to find out whether customs does — and no email is no promise the ship is on time.

Send it from the filing instead: a branded submission alert with the declaration and the ACK attached under ICEGATE’s own file names, over a bill-by-bill table with each consignment id customs assigned. Paste addresses straight out of your mail client — names, quotes and semicolons all understood, and a pasted contact with no address behind it is flagged rather than silently dropped, so you never mail a shorter list than you addressed. Replies come back to you, you are always copied, and every address you use is remembered privately for next time. Each message also carries its own link to a page that renders the filing and explains the ACK in plain English for a recipient who cannot read JSON — withdrawable per message, and it tells you whether they opened it. An amendment sends the same way and says it is one, so the people acting on the earlier alert learn the details have changed. A draft goes the same way before it is filed, so the line or your customer can correct a wrong container number while it still costs nothing: it is stamped “Not filed with customs”, carries no CSN and no customs tracking link, and the message’s page keeps its own copy of what was sent, so going on editing the draft does not rewrite what your recipient sees. A file you only checked here can be sent the same way, under the name you dropped it as, with what the check found.

Several carriers say in their own advisories that if it does not reach them in time they file the master bill themselves and the charges are the customer’s. Drop your CSN on SCMTR JSON upload, press Check with customs, and once customs’ record answers with a CSN number and date you can hand the line the whole thing in one message: the reference, the voyage, every bill with its date in the form a manifest line carries as well as the one a person reads, the MCIN or PCIN customs issued each one, every container with its ISO type, size, load status, agent PAN and bond, and all eight prior-reference fields ready to quote. It goes with a spreadsheet their desk can paste into its own sheet, the same content as JSON for a system to read, your CSN file itself, and a page where every value is one click to copy. The difference from a portal is where the values come from: every one is read from customs’ own record rather than from your file, so what the line keys is what customs will check its filing against — the two things customs does not publish, the shipper-owned flag and the seal, come from your file and say so. Where your file and customs’ record disagree, the message carries customs’ values and lists the differences underneath, so the line knows what to key and you know what to amend. Offered for an entry, an exit and the amendments to either. The deadline that matters is the line’s cut-off for CSNs, after which it files its manifest with what it has: where the line has set one here you see it; otherwise the cut-off the line published on the CSN cut-off board for the call (scmtr.io/cutoffs), said to be the line’s published word and indicative; and where neither has one the platform counts 72 hours back from the arrival customs lists for the VCN and says so — a common cut-off, not your line’s word. A CSN you have started and not sent is reminded to you a day before and once more if it passes with the ship still out.

Type a master bill of lading and a port and the page reads every CSN customs has accepted against the bill, the shipping line’s SAM once it exists, and the vessel’s entry status, consolidated into one shipment: facts the filings agree on stated once, a fact the shipping line’s own manifest bears out marked as such, a fact only one source carries attributed to it, and a genuine disagreement between filers flagged. Each raw record stays one click away, with every PAN cut to its last four characters — enough to tell two filers apart, not to hand a stranger with a bill number anyone’s tax identity. Until the ship is in, it also shows the expected arrival for the call a CSN on the bill names, and the day it moved from if customs has moved it, wherever that ship’s calls are already on record here — the port’s day for the call, not a live position or the line’s schedule. For the container’s physical position you get a link straight into the right carrier’s own tracking with your number already in it — the carrier identified from customs’ record of who is running that VCN, not guessed from the number. And any result can be handed to a phone or a colleague: a share link, a QR code, nothing private in either. And when the question is whether the record is what you sent, drop the CSN file on the result: every bill in it is laid beside customs’ record — not only the one searched — with each value that differs and whether customs holds a later version than the file. The green line on the result says the filings customs holds agree with each other; it is the checker that says whether they agree with you. And when the older SAM/IGM enquiry cannot find a bill the rest of the vessel shows, the house bills say why: one moving on to a foreign port (transhipment) gets no IGM line, so a master whose house bills are all transhipment answers “No details found” there while the SAM holds it — measured on one manifest, not customs’ statement.

For SITC, HMM, ONE, MSC, COSCO, Evergreen, Yang Ming, KMTC, Sinokor and Cordelia the date is read from the shipping line’s own tracking, with whether it is an estimate or has happened and when it was last checked. For lines whose sites cannot be read automatically — Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, Wan Hai and others — the card opens the line’s tracking and lets your team add the ETA it shows, marked as entered by you, never as the line’s word. Customs’ own day for the call sits beside it when customs has the call on record; in the calls watched so far customs has not moved that day for a ship running late, so the line’s date is the one to plan on. Send on WhatsApp writes a short update with the date, the ship and a link.

A VCN resolves to its ship, and one customs has since dropped from that ship is flagged, the strongest sign of a substitution. Signed out, the search answers from the calls already on record here and asks nobody on your behalf; where nothing on record is still to come, it says so and offers a sign-in, because a signed-in search asks customs directly. It never picks between two ships that share a name: each is shown with its calls, and you judge.

It reads CBIC’s September 2026 public tracking facility for accepted CSNs, so a shipping line wanting the split house-bill detail behind a master no longer needs the forwarder to email a JSON file around. The same record quietly repairs filings too: one accepted at customs but never trackable here has its lost tracking id and CIN recovered automatically, so the filing here matches what customs holds. Drop a CSN on the checker and press Check with customs and it does the same for every master bill in the file, six at a time — a seventeen-bill file is three lookups with the count climbing — under one line for the whole file: how many bills customs holds identically, how many differently, how many not at all. The bills that need reading come first and the rest fold away. Where a bill differs, the dates say which kind of difference it is: customs’ record carries the date of the latest version it accepted, so a record dated after the file names the amendment or re-filing that superseded it, and each coded value is read out — a destination that moved from a Nhava Sheva CFS to a Mundra one reads as that, not as two strings. It used to stop at six bills and say so; a line agent’s seventeen-bill CSN had three bills customs held differently, and the checker showed two.

Edit a line with the same field-level editor a CSN gets, with self-consistency checks traceable to ICEGATE’s own error codes — 279, 705, 156/153, 101 and 102, and the shapes real refusals named: 370 with 118, and 707 — run as you work, each problem coloured by what it is: red for what customs has refused, amber for advice. The Containers tab shows every column the file fills, and a value under a key the guide does not name is shown read-only as “Also in the file”, sent back exactly as it came. Opening a file changes nothing in it — a blank port name is filled only when you change the code beside it — and a Guidance Full | Compact switch, shared with the CSN form, tucks the explanations behind ⓘ and widens the page. Save it, come back to it, and write it back exactly as it came, with nothing changed but what you changed. Drop the same file again a week later and it reopens your saved copy — corrections and customs answers included — rather than making a second one; a newer file of the same manifest asks whether to replace the saved copy, and lists what changed value by value — the send’s own job number, control number and time left out. Every field a manifest can carry is documented from ICEGATE’s own SACHM23 guide — the vessel’s registry and tonnage, the voyage, persons on board, ship stores — so a field you have never seen before still explains itself. An entry inward (SEI) or departure notification (SDN) opens for what it is rather than as an empty manifest: those two events carry no cargo — the guide excludes bills, voyage and itinerary from them and requires the arrival and departure details instead — so the cargo tabs are gone, the file opens straight onto the whole message, and the containers landed and loaded, the persons on board and the transport contracts are read out above it. And it reads the guide’s own field table for the manifest’s reporting event: a block the event excludes is not offered unless the file fills it — then it stays on screen with a note, because hiding it would hide something the download still writes — and a field the guide makes mandatory for it is marked — in amber, as a recommendation rather than a rejection, because the rule is ICEGATE’s published one and no customs rejection of a manifest has ever confirmed it. Drop any file from a customs filing on SCMTR JSON upload and it works out whether it is a CSN, a manifest, or one of those two. And since 12 September 2026 the line or its agent can file it from the same screen: Sign & upload verifies the signature, checks the file again on the server, and passes it through the same gate a CSN goes through, so the same manifest cannot go to customs twice. Customs’ ACK, dropped on the same page, is read and kept with the upload it answers: accepted or rejected, what it named, and every MCIN it issued, ready to copy. A rejection names most lines by number alone, so put the manifest beside it — drop the two files together, or add the ACK in the editor — and each rejection is shown on the line it names: its bill, one sentence on what happened, what to do, and customs’ codes underneath. The two files are compared first. Only an ACK to that same upload is placed by line number; an ACK to another upload of the same VCN is placed only where it names the bill, and is marked as the other upload’s; rejected lines the file does not hold are counted rather than guessed at. Above customs’ list the whole ACK is read as one story, headed “What happened, and what to do”: which rows are yours — an ACK to an amendment lists the entire manifest customs holds, so a two-line amendment can come back as seventeen hundred rows — which codes are one problem seen twice, numbered steps to fix it, and a line saying how much of the reading is customs’ word and how much is inference. Every problem the checks find is marked on the field it is about and can be clicked to get there — red for what customs refuses, amber for what it has not — and the checks name what a form hides: a placeholder PAN such as XXXXX0000X, and a field holding the word NULL where the writing software had nothing, each said as what it is rather than as empty.

So a bulk, tanker, break-bulk or tramp call can be built here instead, with no other software. Give the ship’s IMO number and customs’ own record fills in the call: the VCN, the rotation number and date, the port and the expected arrival, none of them copied off an e-mail. Then pick which of the four filings the call needs, named the way a steamer agent names them — the arrival manifest (what used to be the import IGM), entry inward, the departure manifest (the export EGM), the departure notification. On an arrival manifest a bill of lading is ten plain questions: the bill and its date, shipper, consignee, what the cargo is, its HS code, how many units, the weight, where it loaded, and whether it is dry bulk, liquid bulk or break-bulk. The other thirty fields of the line are written the way real bulk manifests write them — the bill number standing in as the equipment id because break-bulk has no container number, bulk packages, metric tonnes, the hazard codes that mean none — each shown with the reason it was filled in, none of them locked, and all of them editable afterwards. The totals, every sequence number and the vessel’s own container list are counted from the file rather than typed, so they cannot disagree with it (279), a non-container box takes the only bond flag customs accepts for one (350), and the ports the ship called at are numbered backwards from this one for you (101, 102). Your filing identity is typed once in Settings and each ship’s particulars are remembered against its IMO number, so its next call asks almost nothing. A departure manifest’s lines are export lines quoting each shipping bill’s PCIN, which ten questions cannot write, so those are added in the editor. For a container ship the lines are the forwarders’ own CSNs instead, added from the filings already on the call. The wizard creates the manifest and hands it to the editor, which checks, signs and uploads it exactly as it does one opened from a file: nothing reaches customs until you sign, and customs, not this platform, decides whether a manifest is accepted. The vessel’s container list is derived from the lines: a box two master lines share carries both lines’ packages and weight added up, which is what the vessel rows of an accepted 559-line SAM and a 284-line SDM read. The berth’s terminal operator code — the one customs checks against the VCN — is remembered per port from the last manifest customs accepted there and offered back next time; a code a reply refused is forgotten. A box two lines share is LCL on each line, as on every manifest on record.

The lookups are batched, paced so a large manifest never overloads ICEGATE’s public enquiry, and stoppable; the results are saved with the manifest. A bill with no CSN yet is reported as absent — the ordinary case for a manifest filed early — never as an error. But a line that quotes an earlier CSN and finds nothing under its own bill date is asked about again under the dates customs does hold the bill under, and a CSN found there is reported as a bill date that differs. The same check asks customs’ own IE-code register about each distinct IEC-typed consignee code on the file — once per code, with every line that carries it listed — and a code the register does not return is noted under the result, in amber, as something to check against the bill of lading: it changes no verdict and stops nothing, because customs has refused no filing for it. On a departure manifest the lines are asked about as export CSNs (SCX), not import ones, and the PCIN or MCIN each line quotes is compared with the CIN customs shows on that CSN’s master row — the export CSN’s own number, or the shipping bill’s it referenced — which on a real 284-line SDM is exactly what every sampled line quoted. An entry inward (SEI) or departure notification opened here is set against the organisation’s own saved SAM or SDM for the same call, and the panel says which copy it read — or that it found none — rather than implying a match. Under every container size field the code is read back as one container terminal’s own list names it (4510, 40 ft dry, 9’6” high), and booking shorthand such as 40HC turns amber: a note, never a stop.

Before it, every correction is free. So open the draft SAM or SDM in Shipping line filing and press Share with CSN holders: the platform asks customs, B/L by B/L, who holds a CSN on it, compares each with your line and tells every holder on the platform whether theirs matches, differs or is not quoted. Your board shows every line and who was told; a link goes to anyone by WhatsApp or e-mail, and a forwarder who drops a CSN on it sees only its own B/Ls, compared and never kept. Name the forwarder on a B/L by PAN, set your own cut-off for CSNs, and at that cut-off the platform reads your lines against customs’ record again and tells you which still have no CSN. A forwarder sees one line — its own B/L — and only with a proof: its CSN on customs’ record for it, its PAN as the consolidator, consignee or notify party, or your naming it.

Open an accepted arrival notice, tick the bills for one consignee, check the four details a CSN does not carry (shipping line, vessel name, voyage, call sign — each filled in and each saying where its value came from) and print, download or e-mail the PDF. The IGM line comes from customs’ own record, never from the CSN’s numbering: until the line’s manifest is on record the form says Awaited, with the date the record was last read — and N.A. for a house bill moving on to a foreign port, which customs never maps onto an IGM line. The e-mail carries the PDF and a covering note, never the CSN file or the acknowledgement.

The quickest way needs only the CSN you filed: drop it on SCMTR JSON upload, choose File an amendment or File a deletion, and the platform asks ICEGATE’s own record for your filing — matched on the PAN in the file and compared field by field — shows you the CSN number and date customs holds with your file laid beside its record value by value, and opens the change ready to sign, with the filing marked in its history as read from ICEGATE rather than typed. It goes under the sender ID the CSN carries, so an organisation that has not filled in Settings yet can still send it, and a deletion opens read-only, exactly the filing customs holds, and is only ever sent for that CSN. If customs holds a different version from the file, you are shown which values differ and nothing is opened; if it holds nothing, you are offered to file it fresh instead, and never a second copy of one it already holds. Holding the amendment itself rather than the CSN, drop the amendment on SCMTR JSON upload: if the CSN it references belongs to no filing here, you are offered a short wizard that takes the evidence instead of a dead end. Three documents in the order they check each other: the amendment you want to file, the original that was accepted, and the ACK that accepted it. The original has to name the same master bill of lading, and the ACK has to be an acceptance granting the exact CSN and date the amendment references — a rejection grants no CSN, and an acceptance for a different one means the amendment was built against a different filing. Nothing is sent to customs; the filing is recorded as accepted under that CSN and the amendment opens against it, under one job number and one history. Without the ACK file — ICEGATE emails it to the address on the licence, often not the person filing — ICEGATE’s own record stands in for it as above, or an organisation admin can type the CSN off the portal, and the record says which it was. The amendment carries the prior CSN reference the way a real one does, and a withdrawal is filed as a deletion rather than left as a status change on your side. Every filing also tells you whether it can still be amended or deleted — both end the moment another party’s CSN against the same master bill of lading is accepted, with no notice; once the shipping line’s manifest covers the bill, File a deletion is withdrawn (the customs officer makes it from then on, per ICES Advisory 37/2026; before that, a deletion followed by a corrected re-file is customs’ own stated route since ICES Advisory 38/2026, though amendment remains the lighter one) while the amendment stays — and the platform watches for both so you are not told by a rejection days later. While you amend, every field you change is highlighted with what the accepted filing said, and a live Changes list shows exactly what you are asking customs to alter — old value, new value — before you sign it.

Dropped on a filing, it is rejected if it answers a different job; dropped on the CSN filing page, one that answers none of your filings — a partner’s, or one filed elsewhere — opens in the checker and is explained there, with nothing recorded. Otherwise, for a filing sent from SCMTR, the status, CSN and details are set from the file, and every error is explained against the payload that was actually sent: the value customs saw, the fix, where that field is on our screens, and one button — Refile — that opens a corrected copy going out as the next attempt under the same job, with the rejected attempt kept as sent. A draft kept here and filed on ICEGATE by hand, or a filing made entirely elsewhere, is recorded through Record a filing made elsewhere instead, with the file that was filed beside its ACK — so what is on record is what customs received, not the draft as it stands now. An email with no file can still be recorded by hand by any team member, and an acceptance often needs no hand at all: the platform watches customs’ public record and moves the filing itself when it appears there. Statuses only move the way a real ACK would have moved them, so the record can never be walked backwards.

The platform will not hold one CSN on two filings. An ACK granting a number another of your filings already carries is rejected and names that filing; ICEGATE’s own answer is recorded without the number, and the filing’s page says which job holds it, links there, and holds back amending, deleting and e-mailing until it is settled. Where the other copy was a person’s — typed, or a file dropped on the wrong job — an organisation admin can settle it from that notice: the page shows who recorded that copy, when, and from which file; the admin confirms the move in a sentence naming both jobs and the number; the CSN moves to the filing customs granted it to, and the other goes back to waiting for its real outcome to be recorded. The audit trail records it as the admin’s judgement rather than as proof, because that is what it is. Two answers from customs for one number are never settled here — that is a helpdesk matter, and the page says so.

An organisation admin can now remove the ACK from that send: the row reads as awaiting customs again, the reply is recorded on the send it answers, and the file itself stays in your files.

Discard prepared send, at the top of the filing’s page, clears it: nothing goes to customs, the draft stays exactly as it was, and the filing is free again. Open to whoever prepared it, whoever owns the filing, or an organisation admin. Recording a filing you made on ICEGATE yourself sets the prepared copy aside at the same moment, so what you filed by hand can never also go from here.

One coloured band at the top says the verdict in a sentence, with the counts beside it (2 things to fix · 13 errors · Attempt 2) and the single next action inside it: Refile, Edit draft, Continue amendment. Under it, one line each for the amendment deadline and any disagreement with the line’s manifest. Then what customs said, as problems rather than a list of errors, the first open and the rest folded; then the filing’s history as a timeline with the raw rows folded behind one line; then what customs holds on record and where the shipment is. A column beside the story keeps the section links, the shipment facts and the read-only exports in view while you scroll; on a phone the links become a strip under the band. The full record sits last, on its own ground, and is what prints.

Your CSNs on the call, every upload of the shipping line’s SAM and customs’ ACK to each, and the files either side has shown for it sit together, with a timeline of what happened and when.

The headline counts what needs attention on the filing side rather than what looks fine, and Start a replacement is offered only where amending genuinely will not do — a CSN that has left customs’ record, or was deleted.

Anyone reads it and downloads it as Excel or PDF. Members add their own bills and change only those, under their organisation’s name. Each row carries Our findings, read from customs’ public record every day and on the owner’s Check now: still pending when the only CSN on the bill is a straight one the manifest quotes; linked on customs’ record when a CSN with the house bills is there and every house bill has its IGM line. That is a finding, never a verdict — a row is marked resolved only by its owner or SCMTR.io staff. Under it, SCMTR.io’s reading in plain words, and the board says which line is holding how many house bills.

Explain this rejection resolves every rejected line to its bill on customs’ own public record, compares it against the CSN it quotes and, where the file you actually sent disagrees with what customs’ accepted manifest carries, says which is which — with a CSV of every line and an evidence pack ready for the helpdesk.

The bill itself opens beside the form — docked to the side on a wide screen, a sheet over the steps on a narrower one, with Show the bill / Hide the bill at the top — zoomable, rotatable, its text copyable. Every value read from it carries the page it came from, and that mark is a button: press it and the bill jumps to that page, so a figure is checked against the document without a second window. It shows the PDFs dropped in this sitting; after a reload, drop the bill again.

Before the amendment is signed, every line it changes or removes is looked up on customs’ public record of your own manifest — its line number, and each container’s sequence number under it — because customs finds what an amendment changes by those numbers, not by the bill: an SAA built from a file numbered unlike the manifest customs held was refused as 749 in September 2026. A container under a number customs does not hold it under stops the signing, and so does a bill customs holds on another line; a line declared as split cargo, a bill on nobody’s record and an enquiry that did not answer never block, and the panel says which. A line added for a bill an accepted CSN already declares is noted (753: a bill customs already holds is quoted, not declared again). An item changed on a line that quotes an earlier declaration is left off, with a note: customs holds no item details on such a line and refused the change as 748 in September 2026. A box the amendment adds to the vessel’s container list is numbered after the ones customs already holds, and a box it changes keeps the number customs holds it under: an amendment built elsewhere that numbered its added boxes as a re-sorted list would was refused as 394, and the Checks tab catches that shape and renumbers the added boxes in one press. A total is a count, not the highest number — a deleted line leaves its number unused — and when a refused amendment comes back 89 and 90 the reply’s own rows, less the lines the amendment deletes, give the line total, set in one press. Or let SCMTR count it: opening an SAA counts the manifest customs holds by itself, off ICEGATE’s public record line by line with no login, and checks the amendment against it — a wrong line total, a container total below the count, a container added a second time and a line added under a number already in use are errors on an arrival manifest whose count customs’ current version confirms; a container total above the count is a warning. And once an accepted reply for the call has been dropped here, the amendment is checked against the manifest that reply lists — line and container totals, added box numbers, every line it updates or deletes — in the Checks tab, in Build amendment and at Sign & upload, which refuses a total or an added number that disagrees with a manifest customs accepted as filed; against an accepted amendment’s reply, or when ICEGATE’s public record cannot confirm the version, the checks are amber and say why.

They can drop their own file back to you from the same link, with no account — and answer on it: one of a few set answers (seen and looking into it, done, our figures are right, please send your CSN number) and a short plain-text note, which lands under Replies on the filing and in your alerts. A case link takes the same answers. It is a reply box, not a chat: nobody has to be online, and it never changes a case’s status or whose move it is.

You see the exact document they will open before anything is shared, and the link itself afterwards, so nothing leaves on trust. The link is an unguessable token, expires in 30 days, is revocable instantly, and creating or revoking one is recorded in the audit log. Sharing a filing twice hands over the same link rather than widening access with a second one.

Add the declaration it answers and each error is marked onto the block it names, with the offending value quoted back. 700 Error-Refile — the rejection that names nothing, and one that appears nowhere in ICEGATE’s own table of codes — gets a four-step checklist run against your file instead of a shrug. The screen names the CSN file it needs — five parts of the name read off the ACK’s own, and a date it knows to be ICEGATE’s reply day rather than the filing’s — and rejects a pair that is not the same filing, judged on what the two files carry rather than on their names, instead of explaining errors against the wrong document. A rejection is not the end of it: where the two files rule on the same master bill of lading and disagree only about which upload they are — the shape a corrected re-filing always leaves, since customs answers the message it received rather than the shipment — it says so, names both job numbers, and tells you whether to go and find the other CSN or the other ACK, rather than leaving you to conclude the tool is being pedantic about a file you know is yours. And it says it where you dropped the file, not at the top of a page you have scrolled past. The codes that name a whole combination rather than a field — 115 and 118, which say only that cargo type, movement, consolidation and the prior-declaration flag do not go together — are worked back through the guide’s own table of accepted combinations: the four values quoted out of your file, which of them is the one that cannot stand, and what the table allows instead. And an ACK says two things besides its errors, both of them read here: customs marks every block it checked and found good, so a rejection tells you what is already right as well as what is not; and it stops checking at the first record that fails, so the house bills after it carry no verdict at all — named, rather than left to be mistaken for nine clean ones. A code in no published list is not left bare: customs writes its unpublished codes in the published ones’ words, so one worded “Not Exists For Update/Delete” or “Already Exists For Addition” is read into the amendment-address family from the reply’s own wording and marked as read that way, a manifest reply’s block-prefixed code (VGD020) is read as its number, and the manifest guide’s own codes 369–379, printed in its list and not the CSN’s, are explained like the rest.

From two masters — or one master with four or more house bills — the record shows one row per consignment: bill, consignee and shipper, goods, boxes, packages, weight, destination, movement and any problems, with search and filters, house bills as a nested table, and each row opening into every field of that consignment. The same view checks an uploaded file, where a problem in the list jumps into the row it belongs to. Every master row links straight to the customs tracker for its bill at the port of reporting — one lookup per bill, not one for the filing — and a single-master filing carries the same lookup beside its bill number. Paper prints the whole record, and on a phone every row is a card.

Findings come in two tiers and are never blurred into one number: red for what the message format actually enforces — the things customs rejects and Sign & upload blocks on — and amber for what is merely unusual, each amber one saying what the evidence for it actually is, because a file can be entirely valid and still have something worth a second look. The file’s own name is checked against the identifiers inside it, since ICEGATE reads six of them out of the filename before it opens the file at all. Every character that is not plain text is listed by line and column, and every value longer than its field allows is named with its limit — the two things ICEGATE rejects by email, with no ACK to read. And a CSN’s VCN is checked against the calls customs currently lists for its ship, because a CSN made in other software never met the check this platform runs before signing: amber where customs lists a different call at your port, has stopped listing the call, or lists it at another port — or where the call had already arrived before the file was made and a later call at the same port is nearer the file’s date, which is how last voyage’s VCN looks on a ship that calls weekly (a rule drawn from one live enquiry, and one that can be amber harmlessly on a feeder filed a few days after it berthed). That is a warning, never a verdict: only ICEGATE decides whether it accepts a VCN. It works out which of the four files you handed it without being told — a declaration, an ACK, a structural-failure response, or a whole shipping line filing (SAM / SDM), which opens as an editable table of its lines rather than as a filing — so a structural-failure response is explained as the different thing it is rather than hunted for a code it never carries. Nothing is filed and nothing is added to your own filings, and it needs no ICEGATE credential of your own. Every file you drop here is kept for two years, so support can work from the file itself if you ask about a rejection and your filings can be linked to their replies over time; only a platform super administrator can open one, every opening is recorded, and you can ask for any file to be deleted. A signed file’s digital signature is verified cryptographically against its exact contents — the same check customs performs — and its DSC is checked against the causes ICEGATE gives for “DSC validation failed” that a file can show: in date, not revoked, chained to CCA India, Class 3, a signing certificate, and — for your organisation — one that has signed a filing customs accepted through Sign & upload before, which is how an unregistered renewal shows. Each check is listed with the passes and anything that could not be checked, and a failed signature says what changed the file where the file shows it, never a wall of base64. The same panel is on the free check at /check, and one button compares the file with the DSC on your own computer. And every label in the opened filing explains itself: hover or tap the ? beside a field for what it means, its key in the JSON, whether the event makes it mandatory and the wire format it carries — on block headings, table columns and badges too, as a sheet on a phone. A CSN dropped without its ACK gets one more line: press Check with customs and customs’ own public record is asked whether it holds this version — green when a filing by your PAN is on record and every value the record carries agrees, amber when customs holds another version, grey when the record is a copy made from a filing customs already holds or holds nothing by your PAN at all — and every answer lays your file beside customs’ record value by value, in plain field names, with the date of each and one word for each result, differences first. And if SCMTR is updated while the page is open, the tab reloads itself with your file kept and checks it again, rather than telling you something went wrong. A file that will not parse is not answered with “Not valid JSON” alone: an IGM in the pre-SCMTR flat-file format — the HREC header line and <consoligm> sections — is named for what it is and told which SCMTR message replaces it, and a missing comma is placed at its line and column with the text around it quoted, so it can be found in the software that wrote the file. On a manifest, a port’s name typed where its code goes is flagged with the code the name stands for, and a key the SACHM23 guide does not name is listed once with how many places carry it rather than once per line.

Send the JSON to the checking address shown on your CSN filing page and in Settings — up to five files in one message, from the address you sign in with — and the full report comes back as a reply: every problem, where it sits in the filing and how to fix it, in the same words the checker uses. Attach the CSN beside the ACK ICEGATE sent for it and the two are read together, so each error names the value sitting in your own file rather than the field it is in; and the report says which of your filings the ACK answers, or that none does because it was filed somewhere else. Its button opens the screen for what comes next — the filing with the ACK ready to record, both files side by side, or Record a filing made elsewhere on its review step — once, for 24 hours, and following it never records anything by itself. ICEGATE’s rejections that arrive as a bare e-mail with no file, such as a control number already processed or a DSC that failed validation, can be forwarded too and come back explained. And with your own checking address from Settings, a forwarding rule can send ICEGATE’s ACKs in automatically, each one checked and reported to you whoever the message was from; it works like a password, so a report of anything sent there says who sent it and only ever opens the checker, and getting a new address asks first, because it stops every rule pointed at the old one. The files are kept like every file you upload, and an address with no account here gets a short note saying how to sign up rather than a report — once a week at most, so a mailbox that forwards automatically cannot be turned into a mail loop.

It shows the facts a customer is asked to confirm — the notify party and its PAN, HS codes, each house bill’s discharge and destination ports, the containers mapped to their house bill — and does the arithmetic for the reader: the house bills’ package and weight totals, summed and checked against the master’s own figures, with a mismatch called out in words. Anything missing prints as a loud gap, never a blank. The printed page carries a QR code that opens the shipment’s live customs record, so the one question the paper cannot answer — is this on customs’ record now? — is a scan away for whoever is holding it.

The link previews in WhatsApp as the question itself. An answer’s address never changes; one that is replaced points to its replacement, and each says when it was last checked.

Each help and reference page a film walks through links it under its heading; the assistant hands out the same links. None shows a customer’s data.

Turn on Only signers send and everyone prepares a filing while only admins and marked signers may press Sign & upload; turn on Company e-mail addresses only and an invitation to any other address is refused. Everyone shares the organisation’s address book and declaration library.

The client chooses Files only or Runs the account, whose ICEGATE ID the files carry and an end date if it wants one; its filings and admins stay its own and it can change agent at any time. Your people work inside the client as account lead and handlers, named in its records by your company, never their e-mail, and the header says which company you are filing for. A tab left on one client can no longer act as another: a request from a tab that no longer matches is refused and the tab offers Keep working here or Reload.

The guided wizard saves continuously too, from the moment a bill of lading number is on screen, and says so in the footer. Before that it still creates nothing on our side — opening it to look around never leaves a stray declaration — but what you have typed is kept in your own browser, so finding the ship before you have the paperwork’s numbers to hand no longer costs you it. It is offered back when you return, and cleared when you sign out.

Write to support@scmtr.io if your organisation wants to connect its own systems.

There is nothing to choose, store or reset — and no password that can be reused against you if it leaks from somewhere else.

A short code shown on both screens has to match first, so a link nobody asked for cannot be turned against you.

When your account is signed in to from a device it has not used before, you get one e-mail saying so, with no link but that page.

Invite colleagues as admins or members, say who reports to whom, and everyone shares the same declarations, address book and vessel history.

Beyond those there are exactly two: a Monday summary of what you checked that week, and one short note, once ever, if you checked a file and never came back. Both carry a one-click Stop these e-mails link and a switch in Settings; nothing else is sent unasked. A material change to the privacy policy or the terms is never e-mailed: the next time you open SCMTR it shows you what changed and asks you to accept it before you carry on.

The reference covers the messages other parties file as well as your own: every field of a shipping line filing (SAM / SDM, SACHM23), of a transhipper’s inland movement (TRCHE01) and of a custodian’s stuffing and stripping reports (CUCHE01), from ICEGATE’s own guides. And a transhipper’s or custodian’s file opens on SCMTR JSON upload like any other: read block by block with those descriptions attached, its reporting event named in words, anything neither guide describes listed rather than dropped, and kept for later if you want it — so a file a CFS sends you is read here rather than forwarded on. Its error codes are explained too, including the ones that are really about your CSN. Live service announcements show inside the app too, where the person they affect is actually working.