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Using SCMTR

Using SCMTR — from signing in to a filed declaration

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Getting in

Sign in with Google or Microsoft, or ask for an email sign-in link — there is no password to set. A Microsoft work account signs in with your organisation's own Microsoft 365 directory; if Microsoft cannot vouch that its email address belongs to your organisation's domain, the sign-in is refused and says so — ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to verify the domain, or use Google or an email link to the same address. If you ask for a link, you can request it here and approve it from your phone; this device is the one that ends up signed in. Signing in covers that in full, including the confirmation code. Signing in takes you straight to Declarations, which is where your work lives.

Your organisation. Everything you file belongs to an organisation. If you were invited, you join the one that invited you. If you signed up on your own, one is created for you and you are its admin. If you belong to more than one, the switcher in the header decides which you are working in.

Roles. A Member creates and files declarations. An Admin does all that, plus manages members, and can do things ordinary members cannot — see What an org admin can do below. Anyone somebody reports to is a manager, who sees and corrects their team's work, and an organisation can let only its signers send. A filing agent can file for client companies, which keep their own filings. Settings → Team and Your team, and filing for other companies explain all of it. Platform staff support the product across organisations.

Before your first new CSN, Settings takes your ICEGATE sender ID, your submitter type (ANC/ASA/ASC), your submitter code and your authorised representative PAN. Every new declaration starts from them, so they are set once rather than typed each time.

A CSN you bring in on SCMTR JSON upload does not need them. It already carries its own sender ID, and it is sent under that one — the form says so above the filing ("Sent under sender ID … the one in the CSN you uploaded"). You can amend it, delete it or file it straight away; an Org Admin can save those details for new CSNs in one click from the same note, but nothing waits on it.

Two of them are worth getting right the first time, because every filing you make inherits them:

    Submitter code is normally your PAN, written bare — AAAAA0000A, not PAN:AAAAA0000A. If what you registered with ICEGATE is genuinely not PAN-based, that is accepted, but then you must fill in the authorised representative PAN yourself: it is otherwise taken from this field, and a code that is not a PAN leaves it with nothing to take.Authorised representative PAN is the PAN of the person authorised to file, and it is the one field here that must be a bare ten-character PAN. Leave it blank when your submitter code is your PAN and it fills itself.

Settings checks all five before saving, so a value that could not work is refused there rather than surfacing at the end of a filing.

Starting a declaration

Three ways in, from the Declarations page:

    The guided wizard — one screen per document you hold: the carrier's master bill of lading with the containers it lists, then your house bill (once per house), then review. It asks for things in the order they appear on the paper and fills in what it can. Best if you file occasionally. It has two start cards, named by the direction the cargo moves: Import filing — CSN Entry (SCE) for cargo arriving in India, and Export filing — CSN Exit (SCX) for cargo leaving it. A band above the steps says which set of screens you are on. An export's screens ask about shipping bills and their PCINs rather than house bills — see exports: filing an SCX, shipping bills and PCINs.The full form — every field, organised by block, with a navigation tree. Best if you know the message and want to move fast.Use as template — copies an existing declaration's data into a brand-new one with its own job number and its own history. For a shipment that resembles one you have already filed.

Can I turn off the explanations under every field?

Yes — the Guidance switch, at the top of the guided steps and in the full form's toolbar beside Essentials | Advanced. Full (where everyone starts) shows the explanation under each field — and, in the guided steps, under each step and section too. Compact tucks every one of them behind a small ⓘ beside the heading or field it explains, so nothing is gone — hover it, tap it, or tab to it to read it.

Compact also changes the layout. With the explanations out of the way, each box is sized to what it holds — a PAN box fits ten characters, a date fits DD/MM/YYYY, a name or an address is given the room — and fields and whole sections sit side by side across the width of your screen instead of one band under another. On a phone it stays one field per line.

Compact never hides anything your own filing raised: a warning, an error, a value marked as filled in for you, a note that something moved, or a duplicate-bill alert all show either way. The choice is remembered on this browser for both the guided steps and the full form. Once you have filed a few CSNs yourself, the guided steps ask you once whether you would like compact; either answer puts the question away, and the switch is always there to change your mind.

Two views of one filing — and switching between them

The wizard and the full form are not two different filings: they are two views of the same draft, and you can move between them freely.

    Inside the wizard, Switch to the full form (in the footer) carries everything you have entered into the full form.Inside the full form, Switch to guided steps (in the toolbar) takes the same filing back into the wizard. The button only appears while the filing is a shape the wizard can show honestly — an Entry (SCE, an import) or, since 2026-09-20, an Exit (SCX, an export), with one master consignment and one item on each bill. Where the only thing in the way is a bill with several items, the button stays and first shows what switching would do, bill by bill — the items become one, keeping the first HS code with the bill's own package count and type, and taking the bill's goods description where the items' own differ — and nothing changes unless you press Combine and switch. Where the bill has no count the items' counts are added up, unless they are in different kinds of package: then the count and type are left for you to fill, and the confirmation says so. A bill with an item declaring dangerous goods is never combined. Add a second consignment and the button quietly goes away; the full form is the right place for that filing, as it is for the other reporting events and for an amendment.Edit draft always reopens the view you last worked in. Leave a filing half-done in the wizard, come back tomorrow, and it opens in the wizard with every step's remaining work counted on the step rail. Same for the full form.

In the full form's section tree, the two arrows at the top expand or collapse every section at once — useful on a consolidation whose tree runs deep.

Can I upload the bill of lading PDFs instead of typing them?

Yes — or e-mail them: where it is switched on, the same bills sent to the bills address come back as a drafted checklist to approve (Bills by e-mail). In the app, on the first step of the wizard, press Upload bill of lading (PDF) and drop the bills as the PDFs the line or the forwarder sent you — the master and every house bill together, up to 20 files of up to 10 MB each. Drop more than 20 and only the first 20 are read; it tells you how many were left over, to drop again once those are filled.

What it does that pasting text cannot:

    It works out which bill is the master and which are the houses, so each house bill fills its own step with its own number and date. Every bill it read is listed with a This is the master bill / house bill choice, so you can correct its guess — or settle one it was not sure of — before anything is filled.It reads each container's own seal, not just the container list.The bill opens beside the form. A bill of lading dropped for reading is drawn in a panel next to the guided steps — docked to the side on a wide screen, a sheet that slides over the form on a narrower one — with Show the bill / Hide the bill at the top of the steps. It can be zoomed, rotated and its text copied.Every value shows the page it was read from, and that mark is a button: press it and the panel jumps to that page, so a value is checked against the bill without leaving the form or opening a second window.The PDFs are kept with your organisation's files, so a filing can later be checked against the bill it was made from. The panel itself, though, shows only what you dropped in this sitting: after a reload, drop the bill again to see it beside the form.

The rules are the same as a paste's: nothing is written until you press the button, nothing you have already typed is overwritten, and the ship is searched for rather than written in.

A scanned PDF is kept but not read. A bill that is a photograph or a scan of paper has no text in it to read, so the file is saved and you are told to type its details — or to ask the sender for the PDF their own system produced, which almost always has text. No bill of lading was found in this PDF means the file had text but nothing that looks like a bill of lading: check it is the bill and not a covering letter or an invoice.

Paste bill of lading text

You do not have to type a bill of lading in field by field. Open the PDF, select all, copy, and paste the lot into Paste bill of lading text on the first step of the wizard.

What happens then:

    It reads what the document unmistakably says — the container and its seal, packages, weight, HS code, goods description, marks, the discharge port — and shows you every value it proposes, grouped by the step it belongs to, before anything is written.Nothing is written until you press the button, and nothing you have already typed is overwritten. A paste is an offer, not a correction.Ports are shown as both halves — INPAV1 — PIPAVAV — so you can check the code against the name printed on your bill. The code is what goes into the filing.The ship and the voyage number are reported, not filled in — but you do not have to retype them. A bill names the ship and numbers the voyage the carrier's own way; the message wants a seven-digit IMO and the VCN customs issued for that call. So the paste hands the name to the ship finder above it and runs the search for you: pick your hull out of the results and the IMO is written. If you were part-way through typing a ship's name yourself, the paste leaves it alone.If the bill lists more than one container, every number is filled into the master B/L's container table; weights and package counts are left for the house bill, because the figures printed on a bill are the whole bill's, not one box's.Weights in pounds are declined entirely, number and unit together. A CSN carries kilograms or metric tons; a pound figure with its unit quietly dropped would read as kilograms.

It works with a scanned-to-text bill as well as a native PDF, because it recognises values by their shape — a container by its ISO 6346 pattern, a party by the GSTIN inside it — rather than by hunting for captions, which many bills lose when copied.

Paste a party instead of typing it in nine pieces

Each party section on the house-bill screen and the full form has the same shortcut for one address block. Copy the shipper (the message's consignor), consignee or notify party (the notified party) out of the bill, paste it, and it fills the name, street, postcode, country, PAN, GSTIN, IEC, phone and email.

The GSTIN is what makes this exact: its first two digits are the state code the message wants and its middle ten characters are the PAN, so one token settles three fields with no guessing. Without a GSTIN it reads the end of the address — country, PIN or ZIP, state, then city — matching state names exactly, never nearly, and the preview says where each value came from. A six-digit number is not taken as an Indian PIN when the address names a foreign country, or one of the foreign cities whose postcodes are also six digits (Shanghai, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City and others) — check the country on anything from abroad.

Paste both bills, not just one

When you hold a master and a house for the same consignment, paste both. The second one rarely adds fields — a house repeats most of its master — but a pair shows two things one document cannot:

    Where the two bills disagree, listed plainly, separating "the same value written differently" from "these are genuinely different values". Neither is reconciled for you: quietly normalising them would hide a real data error as often as it fixes a typo.Who the consolidator is — the party that is the master's consignee and the house's agent at destination. That is the party the container agent code follows from, and it is offered rather than written.

You can also import a JSON file you already have: Declarations → Check a filing or acknowledgement. It is shown read-only and checked first; importing it creates a draft. Note that the transmission identifiers and any CSN are deliberately stripped, because they belong to the filing that produced the file, not to this one.

That same screen also reads acknowledgements and structural-failure responses, and explains every error in one — see Every ICEGATE error code. An amendment or deletion (msgTyp: "A") is the one thing it will not import as a new draft: it opens against the accepted filing it amends instead, so that filing's job number and history are kept.

Following the cargo after you have filed

A filing's page has a Where this shipment is section carrying both answers, because they are different questions:

    SAM status (ICEGATE) — whether your master bill of lading has reached the carrier's arrival manifest. This is about the paperwork, and it also changes what you can still do: once the manifest is found, the shipping line has filed, so a deletion is the customs officer's and a fresh CSN is not the route — while an amendment is still yours to file, with the line's SAA to follow (ICES Advisory 37/2026).The carrier's own tracking — where the container physically is. Only the shipping line can answer that, so the card names the line (and how it knows) and lists your bill and containers, each opening the line's own tracking already searched where its site takes a number in a link, and copied ready to paste where it does not. If the numbers do not name the line, it asks you to pick it — see Following the container itself.

Filling it in

Essentials and Advanced. Essentials shows what the MIG requires for the reporting event you picked. Advanced shows every applicable field. Essentials never hides a field you have already filled, so you can work in it safely.

Text turns into capitals as you type — that is deliberate, not a glitch. Every accepted filing is uppercase throughout, so the form converts what you type or paste rather than letting a lowercase entry travel to customs and fail there. Bill of lading and container numbers also shed anything that is not a letter or digit — ICEGATE rejects special characters in those outright (its errors 354, 355 and 356 say so by name) — and party names and addresses keep only the characters real filings carry. Every field also keeps to plain text: a curly apostrophe or quote pasted from a PDF or Word becomes a straight one, a long dash becomes -, a non-breaking space becomes an ordinary space and an accented letter becomes its plain letter (CAFÉ → CAFE), because one such character saved in the wrong encoding fails the whole file with ICEGATE's "File is not UTF-8 encoded". Paste straight from carrier paperwork; the cleanup is done for you.

Figures pasted from a document are cleaned up. A bill of lading prints 12,500 KGS, and a number field will take it as it stands — the comma and the unit are stripped, leaving 12500, and where the unit is one the message codes for (KGS, MTS, CBM) it fills the unit field beside it, unless you have already chosen one. Pounds are deliberately not converted: the message has no code for them, and quietly turning them into kilograms would change the declared weight.

Unticking "Same as consignee" clears the copied details. You untick it because the notify party is not the consignee, so the fields are emptied for you to type — a copy left in place is how a bill goes out naming the consignee as the notify party. Nothing of your own is lost: what is cleared is the consignee's details, and Undo — put the consignee's details back beside the box takes them again in one press (useful when the notify party is nearly the consignee and you only want to change a line of the address).

Is the house (HBL) included? Yes by default — nothing to answer. Most filings are an HBL under the carrier's MBL, so a new filing starts with one and the master-bill screen says House B/L (HBL) included: Yes under Master Entry. Filing the MBL only, with no HBL? Press No HBL? Remove it beside it; you then fill shipper, consignee and goods on the next page, on the MBL itself. Add HBL puts it back. If you have already typed details on the HBL, removing it asks first: Move details to MBL, Delete HBL, or Cancel.

The house bill's date says how it compares with the master's. A line under it reads "Same as the master B/L date", or names the master's date when they differ. It is a statement and not a warning — a house bill issued on a different day from its master is ordinary, and nothing in the MIG relates the two.

You do not need the IMO number. The master-bill screen has a Vessel name / Voyage box. Type the vessel the way your B/L writes it, voyage after a slash (MAERSK CAMEROUN/629W), and press Search vessel — an IMO no. or a VCN works in the same box. No VCN yet? Fetch VCN here, under the box, opens VCN search in a new tab so your filing stays open.

Because a ship's name is not a unique identity — names are transferred between hulls, and several ships can carry the same name at once — it shows you every vessel that has been known by that name, with the port and arrival date customs holds for each. Check those against your bill of lading and pick yours. Nothing is filled in until you do. If the search finds nothing, or the vessel has no IMO number at all, Type vessel details manually — that way out is offered on the empty result itself, not only at the foot of the panel.

If you pasted a whole bill of lading first, this search has already run: the paste reads the ship off the document and puts it in the box for you.

Once the ship is known, two questions answer themselves: the transport type is "IMO vessel" because you identified it by its IMO number, and the mode is sea. Both are shown with the reason they were chosen, and you can change either.

What does "filled in for you" mean, and why does a field refill when I clear it?

The wizard fills in every value it can work out from what you have already entered, and says so under the field with the reason: the consolidation indicator from whether a house bill sits under the master; the container's type, seal type and agent from the master's shipping-line PAN; the next port and movement from the destination; "not hazardous" codes; the only container's packages and weight from the bill's totals. None of it is locked — type over any of them and your value wins, and stays.

Two behaviours follow from that rule and are worth knowing. A field you clear refills, because a blank is exactly what a seed fills; to change a seeded value, type the new value over it rather than deleting first. And a seed that no longer fits is corrected: remove the house bill after the master was seeded R and it becomes M, with the new reason shown. The one exception is the hazard question — answering Yes blanks the not-hazardous codes and keeps them blank until you type the real ones.

Can I type the destination once for all my house bills?

Yes. In the guided steps, a master with house bills under it has a Route for all house bills section on the master step: the port of acceptance (the port of loading), the first port of entry, the final destination (FPOD), the next port of unlading, the inland transport (rail or road), the transhipper and the item type. Type them once and every house bill starts with them, each saying so under the field.

    The first port of entry fills itself from the port you are reporting to — the Indian port the ship enters, which is the same for every house bill on one master, and on every accepted filing on record equals the reporting port. Pick a different voyage and it moves with it until you type your own. Every house bill takes it, including one sent to a destination of its own, and you can still change it on a single house bill, under Customs route and codes filled in for you.

    The inland transport is how the cargo moves on from the port of entry — rail or road. It fills itself from the destination the way accepted filings do: rail to the northern ICDs and to ICD Whitefield, road to an SEZ, to ICD Irungattukottai, and into a Chennai CFS from Kattupalli or Ennore. Change it on the master and every house bill going the route's way follows. On a house bill it is under Where it is cleared, below the destination, where you can change it for that bill alone. It only appears when the cargo moves on — cargo cleared at the port it lands at has no inland leg. It is the mode on the itinerary legs after the port of entry; the full form shows those legs one by one.

    One bill going somewhere else? Change its destination on that house bill's own page. Only that bill changes, and it says Changed for this bill only, with a Use … button naming the route's value (for example Use INTKD6) to put it back on the route. The bills after it keep the route; they do not follow the exception.

    The next port of unlading fills itself from the destination — the destination's port: the ICD for inland cargo (Chennai → ICD Whitefield gives INWFD6), the port itself for a CFS there (INMAA1ACL1 gives INMAA1), which is what accepted filings carry. It follows the destination until you type your own, and every bill going the route's way takes it. A bill with a destination of its own works out its own next port instead, like the transhipper below.

    The transhipper goes with the destination. A bill sent somewhere other than the route's destination drops the route's transhipper and asks you to pick the one for its own destination, or to keep the route's in one click. An SEZ takes none, and the field says so.

    Changing the route's own destination takes its transhipper off too — off the route and off every bill following it — with one click under the route to keep it (none for an SEZ). A transhipper filled in on a bill going into an SEZ gets an amber note and a warning on review, and never blocks filing.

    Changing the route later moves every house bill you have not changed, and leaves the ones you have. That holds on a draft you reopen days later too. Retyping the route one character at a time never picks up a bill you set apart, even if the route passes through that bill's value on the way.

    You can see which bills are exceptions. Under the route, the master step says how many house bills follow it and lists any with a destination or transhipper of their own.

    It is not sent to customs. The route only fills in your house bills; the master bill is filed exactly as accepted consolidations file it.

If you typed house bill 1 before looking at the route, adding a second house bill starts the route from house bill 1, once, so the new bill does not arrive empty. In the full form, Add house bill copies the port of acceptance, destination and item type once — each from the master's route if a house bill still holds that value, otherwise from the house bill before it — fills the next port of unlading from that destination's port, and never copies the transhipper, which the full form does not re-check when a destination changes. It never changes them afterwards.

Does the duplicate master B/L check work in the full form too?

Yes. It runs in both the guided steps and the full form: type a master B/L number on a master consignment and, after about six characters, it checks your own filings and asks ICEGATE whether that bill is already filed. It warns and never blocks, because you and the shipping line file separate CSNs against the same master on purpose.

Fetch from ICEGATE. On a master consignment's page in the full form, Fetch from ICEGATE's manifest pulls the vessel's Sea Arrival Manifest and prefills what matches — vessel, voyage, containers. Nothing is written until you have reviewed it.

Two things are worth knowing before you reach for it, because they decide whether it can help you today. It reads the carrier's arrival manifest, and that manifest is filed at or near arrival while your CSN is filed in advance — so on a fresh filing there is usually nothing there yet, and an empty result means "not yet", not "wrong". And even when it does answer, it covers the voyage: the ship, the ports, the bill numbers, the containers. It does not carry your shipper, consignee, notify party, HS code or goods description, and no integration with any carrier ever will — see the next answer for why. Pasting your bill of lading is the faster start for a new filing; fetching is at its best on an amendment, or as a check after filing.

Shipper, consignee and notify party on a house bill

A house bill carries its own shipper (the message calls this party the consignor), consignee and notify party (the notified party). Nothing is inherited from the master consignment, so where the parties differ there is no link to break — you simply fill the house's own fields. In the wizard they are three sections of the house-bill screen, in the bill's own order and words.

That is the ordinary shape of a consolidation, not an exception. The master names the parties on the carrier's bill, typically the consolidator here and its overseas agent or co-loader at the other end; each house underneath names the real shipper and the real buyer for that one consignment. Customs expects exactly that difference.

Where the fields are. In the full form's sidebar:

Master consignments → the master consignment → House consignments → the house bill → Transport document

The house's Transport document page is a full copy of the block, with Shipper, Consignee and Notify party as three groups of its own.

Filling them in.

    On the master's Consignment reference page, set the consolidation indicator first — that is what says house bills are expected underneath.Add the house bill under House consignments and give it its house B/L number and date.Open the house's Transport document and fill Shipper, then Consignee: name, code, code type, street, city, state, country, postal code. Pick the state from the list and the two-digit state code fills itself.Consignee and notify party start at country IN; the shipper has no default, because on an import it is usually foreign. Change any of them freely.For the code type, use PAN or IEC — those are the only two that appear on accepted filings. If you have a GSTIN for the party, the PAN is already inside it (see "Party codes and PANs"), and pasting the party block extracts it for you.

The notify party has a "Same as consignee" tick. It starts unticked and the notify party starts blank: typing the consignee does not fill it, so enter the notify party from the bill, or tick the box when the bill names the consignee there too. Once ticked, the wizard folds the notify fields away and the full form shows them read-only, and either way they follow that bill's own consignee as you type it. Untick it to type the notify party yourself: the copied details are cleared, with one press to put them back if you wanted them as a starting point. Ticking it when a different party is already typed there asks first: replace it with the consignee, or keep what you typed. A draft saved with the same named party in both places opens with the box ticked.

Picking a party from the address book fills the whole block — code type, state and state code included — and never overwrites something you have already typed. A pick is an offer, the same rule the paste follows.

"Same as the master consignment" never covers parties. That tick, where a house offers it, copies packages and measures and the container list. Shipper, consignee and notify party are always the house's own.

The house bill's parties are checked like everything else that is mandatory: a blank house consignee, shipper name or goods description blocks the filing here rather than at ICEGATE. It did not always — until 2026-09-05 the official field table described the house-level transport document only in prose, which the app could not read as rules, so a quiet form was not proof the block was complete. It is now.

Why can't the app fetch my consignee and my cargo details?

Because nobody upstream has them. On a consolidated shipment the carrier's master bill names the consolidator as shipper and the destination agent as consignee — the individual shippers and consignees underneath are on your house bills, which are your own paper. They have never been visible to the shipping line, so no carrier system can return them however well we authenticate to it. The same is true of the HS code, the goods description and the dangerous-goods classification: those are declarations you make, not facts a carrier holds.

Carriers' own tracking APIs do not close this either. They return container and vessel events — milestones, ports, estimated arrivals — which is roughly the same ground the customs enquiry already covers, for far more setup.

So the real answers to "stop making me retype this" are the three the app already gives you: paste the bill of lading once and it fills across every step, let the address book learn your parties so the second filing for a customer needs almost none of them typed, and let the derived values fill themselves with a stated reason. That is a history-and-documents problem, and it is solved where the work actually is.

Your address book fills itself. Shippers, consignees, notify parties, vessels and item descriptions are remembered from what you file and offered as you type next time.

Autosave. Drafts save as you go. Closing the tab does not lose work.

One exception worth knowing, because it is deliberate rather than a gap: the guided wizard does not create the draft the moment you open it. It creates it when a bill of lading number first appears — typed, or filled in by the paste — and from that moment it saves continuously in the background as you work, the same way the full form does. The footer tells you plainly: "Saving…", then "All changes saved". Opening the wizard to look around therefore leaves no stray CSN behind and does not count against your plan — but before any bill number is on screen, closing the tab does lose what you typed. Enter (or paste) the master B/L number and the filing is safe from then on.

Updates while you are working. New versions of SCMTR are released often, sometimes several times a day. If one ships while your filing is open, the page reloads itself onto the new version and puts your work back where it was — same values, same step, same bill — and says so on screen. You do not need to do anything. A save or a submission interrupted this way never reached the server, so there is no half-saved draft and no duplicate filing; press the button again after the reload. If it happens while you are signing, you sign again.

The checklist. A running list of what is missing or wrong for this reporting event. Required entries block submission; recommended ones do not, and say so. Clicking an entry takes you to the field.

How do I download or print the checklist?

Open the checklist and use its own Print button. It opens your browser's print dialog with only the checklist on the page, so choosing Save as PDF as the destination gives you the file, and choosing a printer gives you the sheet for the docs folder. There is no separate "download" button and no file waiting on a server — the PDF is made by your own browser at the moment you ask for it, which is why it is always the checklist as it stands right now.

What is on the sheet. A header naming the job and its date, the reporting event in words, the ship, the voyage/VCN and the reporting port, and the CSN number customs gave the shipment, set large in a box of its own — it is the reference the line, the CFS, the terminal and the Bill of Entry all quote, so it is the first thing anyone picking the sheet up should find. Where the number reached us from customs' own record of the filing rather than from an acknowledgement, the box says so underneath — it is customs' number either way, and the _ACK is still the file to keep. A filing customs accepted that has neither shows its CIN there instead. Printed before there is any of the three, the box is replaced by two ruled blanks at the foot of the sheet, to write the CSN number and date in once customs answers. Under that, what the whole filing adds up to: how many master bills, how many house bills, how many containers (counted as boxes, so a container shared by three bills counts once), the total packages and the total gross weight. Then each master bill, with its route in four stops — port of acceptance, first port of entry, destination port (FPOD) and next port of unlading — a master-to-house reconciliation showing both totals, the difference and MATCH or MISMATCH, and its container list with each box's seal and full weight. Then every house bill on its own card: shipper, consignee and notify party with their PANs and countries, marks, packages, weight, goods description, HS codes, the transhipper and its bond where the cargo moves onward, and that bill's own share of each container. The notify party prints with its own details whenever it differs from the consignee in any field — a consignee notifying its own broker is shown at the broker's address, not its own — and reads Same as consignee only when every field agrees. Every block carries a tick box, because the point of the sheet is to be checked against the carrier's documents with a pen.

The figures are printed to be pasted, not only read: weights and counts are plain numbers with no thousands separators, kept to up to three decimals exactly as filed, so 10290.184 copies into another system as 10290.184 and never as 10,290.18. (A downloaded CSN file is stamped with the time it was written, so a draft started on Monday and downloaded on Wednesday carries Wednesday's time in its header.)

Two things worth knowing before you print. Port and party codes are turned into names first, so the printed sheet reads as names rather than codes; a code we cannot resolve prints as the code itself rather than as an error. And if the filing still has gaps that would surprise whoever reads the sheet, you are shown them first and can either fix them or choose Print anyway — the sheet then says plainly what was missing when it was printed.

A filed CSN has the same thing from its own page: Print under Export & share, beside Share checklist (an expiring, revocable read-only link for someone outside your organisation) and Download PDF. None of the three changes the filing or tells customs anything.

Is my work saved? What happens if I close the tab?

Once a filing exists, everything is saved as you type. There is no Save button. The footer says "All changes saved" and means it — a CSN is normally filled over several sittings as shipment information arrives, and that is the shape the product is built for.

A filing "exists" from the moment a bill of lading number is on screen, and deliberately not before. Opening the guided steps to look around creates nothing, leaves no half-started declaration on your CSN filing list, and counts nothing against your plan.

That leaves one window — you have opened the guided steps and have not yet typed a bill number. The most likely thing to be in it is the ship, because the vessel search sits at the top of that screen and a filer usually knows the vessel before they have the paperwork's numbers to hand. What you type in that window is kept in your own browser, and offered back when you return. Either start card — Import filing — CSN Entry (SCE) or Export filing — CSN Exit (SCX) — always opens a blank filing; above it, a note names the unfinished one — its ship, and when you last changed it — with Continue that filing and Discard it. Entering anything into the new filing instead chooses the new one, and it replaces the unfinished copy.

Three things about that copy are worth knowing, because it behaves differently from everything else:

    It is on the machine you typed it on, not on our side. Open the same filing on a different computer and it is not there — it never left the browser.It is cleared when you sign out, and expires by itself after a day. A shared office workstation does not hand your half-started filing to whoever signs in next.It only ever holds one unsaved start. The moment a bill number turns it into a real filing, the browser copy is deleted and the server's is the only one.

If we ship an update while you are mid-filing, the page reloads and puts everything back where it was, including which step you were on. Nothing is filed and nothing is lost.

Filing it

Sign & upload is how a filing reaches customs, and it does five things in order:

    Compares your entries against ICEGATE's own arrival manifest. A disagreement pauses you and shows what differs; you may still choose to continue. A manifest that simply is not there yet is silent.Freezes the declaration into a numbered version, so what you reviewed is what gets signed.Asks the scmtr DSC Signer on your computer to sign it with your DSC token — the token asks for its PIN, and the private key never leaves it. If more than one usable certificate is present you are asked which; if the Signer is not installed, a dialog offers the download.Checks the signature verifies against the frozen bytes, before anything is sent.Sends the signed bytes to ICEGATE through its file-upload channel — no ICEGATE credential of your organisation's is needed.

If you cannot install the Signer, the dialog in step 3 also offers Sign on ICEGATE: download the frozen file, sign it on ICEGATE's own portal, and upload it back to the same filing. See Signing your filing for both routes and everything that can go wrong.

Download first if you want to check. The Download button gives you the exact JSON that will be sent. Reading it costs nothing; a rejection costs a filing.

If the checklist still shows problems, Download and Copy ask first. Sign & upload refuses a filing with problems outstanding; until 23 September 2026 the Download JSON and Copy JSON buttons did not, and said nothing — so a filer took a file this form knew customs would refuse, filed it on ICEGATE by hand, and was refused for faults the checklist had been showing. Both doors stay open, because a file is legitimately taken away to fix or to hand to someone who can, but they now say what customs would refuse, name the first few in the form's own words, and offer Show me what to fix before Download anyway. A red N problems to fix pill sits beside them in the toolbar, and the notice after a download with problems says how many went with it. The e-mail doors say the same inside the message — see What if the checklist still shows problems when I send it?.

After you file

One of five things happened:

    A reference came back. ICEGATE gave a tracking id, and the filing shows it. For a fresh filing (not an amendment or a deletion) an acceptance then reaches the filing on its own: since 22 September 2026 the platform reads ICEGATE's public record about every fifteen minutes, and when it names this transmission and agrees 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 by email only, as the next case. Keep the _ACK either way and drop it on the filing: it is customs' own file, and one that agrees with the record is kept as the transmission's own answer.No tracking id. The portal accepted the file but returned nothing to poll. ICEGATE emails the outcome to your registered address. Drop the attached _ACK file onto the filing — ⋯ → Upload ACK on its row, the drop inside the band at the top of its page, or SCMTR JSON upload on the CSN filing page, which finds the filing from the file — and the status, CSN and details are set from it and every error explained; with only the email's words, use the recording form the band offers while an outcome is awaited. An accepted one sent from here can also be found on customs' record, handle and all, as above.Rejected on upload. ICEGATE would not take the file. The reason is shown and the draft is still yours to fix.Delivery unconfirmed. The upload left and no answer came back. The filing is locked and marked as sent, because that is the safer assumption, with no tracking number claimed; the platform reads customs' public record until the doubt is settled. Do not upload it again — see After you file.Held. Nothing was sent and your signed file is unchanged: sends are paced, or uploads have stopped completing and sending is paused for a few minutes. Try again shortly.

Then customs decides: accepted, and a CSN number is granted; or rejected, and the filing unlocks so you can correct and re-file.

How do I amend or delete a filing customs has accepted?

From the CSN filing list or from the filing's own page. An accepted filing carries two buttons — Amend this filing and File a deletion — and on a narrow screen they sit under the ⋯ (More actions) menu on its row.

    Amend this filing opens the editor on a copy of the accepted filing with the CSN reference and the amendment envelope already filled in. Change what was wrong: every field you change is highlighted with what the accepted filing said, and Changes in the toolbar counts them and lists old value and new value. Then Sign & upload, exactly as for the original — it goes to customs as an SCA against that CSN, and the acknowledgement comes back the same way. See amending or withdrawing a filing for what an amendment may and may not change.File a deletion opens a copy with nothing to edit and one warning: signing it withdraws the whole CSN at customs. Check the CSN number is the filing you mean to withdraw, then Sign & Submit. Since ICES Advisory 38/2026 (21 September 2026) customs says a CSN deleted before the shipping line's manifest can be re-filed with corrected particulars; the one re-file after a deletion on record here, from before the advisory, was refused as a duplicate, and none has been seen accepted since — read deleting does not free the bill of lading before relying on it.A copy in progress shows on the filing as Continue amendment or Continue deletion, beside Discard the amendment / Discard the deletion. Discarding throws away only the unfiled copy; the accepted filing at customs is untouched. One copy exists at a time per filing, so two colleagues cannot build rival amendments off one CSN (an org admin can open a second).Best before another party's CSN is accepted. Once another filer's CSN against the same master bill is accepted, both buttons stay but the page warns that customs' error list has a refusal for changing a linked CSN (320) — none seen on a reply yet; if it comes, settle it with the shipping line and your jurisdictional customs officer. The shipping line's manifest closes less: since ICES Advisory 37/2026 (18 September 2026) Amend this filing stays, and the page tells you to give the line the amended CSN and MCIN/PCIN for its own manifest amendment (SAA) — after Sea Entry Inwards both need the jurisdictional customs officer's approval — while File a deletion is withdrawn, because a deletion is then the officer's to make. The filing's page says which applies, and whose filing caused it.

Two things that look like an amendment and are not:

    A filing customs refused never received a CSN, so there is nothing to amend. Use Refile on its row: a corrected copy opens under the same job number and goes out as the next attempt, with the refused attempt kept in the version history.A draft has nothing at customs. Delete draft removes it and nothing else.

A filing made on the ICEGATE portal or in other software is amended the same way once it is recorded here: drop the amendment on Check an ICEGATE file and the platform offers to record the original first.

What does a row on the CSN filing list show?

Enough to know which filing it is and whether it needs you, without opening it.

    The shipment, first: the master bill of lading and what is in it, with a + N more count where the filing carries several master consignments.The identifying line under it — job number, reporting event, port of reporting, vessel, how many house bills and containers, the consignee.The status, as a badge — the same statuses as the table below — with a second badge while a transmission is in flight (Awaiting ACK), a padlock on a filing that is locked, and the CSN number and date once customs has granted one.A voyage badge, when the ship's call needs a look: Not on customs' list, when customs listed the call this filing names and its latest answers no longer do, and VCN now available, when a draft that was saved without a conveyance reference can have one because customs now lists a call for its ship at your port. Neither is shown once you change the vessel or the VCN it was about. See Finding the ship you are filing for.Its transmissions, folded behind a count, one line each.

What does a filing's page show, and in what order?

Open any CSN from the list and its page answers the questions in the order people ask them.

Where it stands. One coloured band at the top says the verdict in a sentence — refused, accepted with its CSN, awaiting customs, filed but untracked, still a draft — with short chips beside it such as 2 things to fix · 13 errors · Attempt 2, and the single next action inside the same band: Refile on a refusal, Edit draft on a draft, Continue amendment when one is in progress. While an outcome is still awaited, the band's lower half is where you record it: the acknowledgement drop, or the form for an outcome that came by email. The band's colour is the status — red for refused, green for accepted, amber for anything still pending — so the page reads at arm's length before a word does.

Under the band, one line each for what qualifies the verdict: whether the filing can still be amended (see Two-party filing and deadlines), and, when the shipping line's manifest or another filer's CSN disagrees with yours, a line saying so with a link down to the detail.

What customs said — on a refused filing only. Errors are grouped by problem, not listed one by one: a refusal carrying the same code on twelve house bills reads as one problem in twelve places, and the heading counts it that way — 2 problems across 13 places. Each problem shows What to do once, as numbered steps; then Where customs found it, every place listed with a Show in the filing record link that opens the block it names; and Why customs says this, folded, for the background. The first problem opens; the rest are folded until you open them, and a long list of places folds after six behind Show all 12 places. Two phrasings worth knowing: On every house bill (12) means the code landed on every house bill the filing carried — almost always a sign the whole filing duplicates one already on record; and the badge Refuses the whole filing versus Names one value says whether the code is about the filing as a whole or about one field. The problem that concerns the master bill reads before the ones that concern its houses.

Filing history — every transmission as a timeline, newest first, in plain words: Fresh filing · Rejected, Amendment · Awaiting ACK. Where customs answered with errors, the file's own raw rows fold behind one line — ICEGATE reported 13 problems — so the page does not say the same thirteen things twice. Attempts that were frozen but never sent are a footnote, not a step.

Two folds below the history, closed until needed: Record a different acknowledgement, for a newer reply ICEGATE emailed after the outcome shown; and, for organisation admins, Change this CSN's status by hand, which sets any status in either direction and is audited.

What customs has on record and Where this shipment is — what ICEGATE's public enquiries hold for this bill (your own accepted filing, other parties' filings, the line's manifest and any disagreement with it), and then whether the bill has reached the vessel's manifest plus the carrier's own tracking. Once the line's manifest (or another filer's CSN) is on your bill, it shows every field the two can be compared on side by side, each marked Fix, Check or OK to differ, with one line at the top saying which applies, whether the line quotes your CSN, and what to do. See What customs already holds, What must match and Tracking your cargo.

Beside the story, on a desktop — a column that stays put as you scroll: links to each section of the page with counts, the Shipment facts (master B/L, vessel, voyage reference, port, contents, consignee, goods) with Track at customs under the bill number, and Export & share — Print, Share checklist, Download PDF, none of which changes the filing. On a phone the same links sit in a strip under the band and the shipment facts follow the story.

The full filing record, last, on its own grey ground: every block of the filing as it was sent, read-only, with each block a refusal named marked in place. It is what prints.

Statuses, and what each one means

StatusMeaning
DRAFTNot filed. Editable.
SUBMITTEDSent, awaiting the customs decision. Locked.
FILED_UNTRACKEDFiled, but no tracking id — the outcome must be recorded by hand. Locked.
ACCEPTEDCustoms granted a CSN. Locked; changes go through Amend.
REJECTEDCustoms refused it. Unlocked for a corrected re-file.
CANCELLEDA deletion was accepted. Locked.
SUPERSEDEDA later filing replaced it.
Delivery unconfirmedA SUBMITTED filing whose upload got no answer. Locked, no tracking id; the platform keeps reading customs' record for it. Not a status of its own — a badge beside SUBMITTED.

A locked declaration is not stuck — it means the way to change it is Amend or File a deletion, not editing in place.

My filing is still waiting for its acknowledgement — can I get the CSN number without it?

Usually you will not have to ask. Since 22 September 2026 the platform reads ICEGATE's public record for every filing still waiting on an answer, about every fifteen minutes for sixty days. For a fresh filing sent from here, once customs' record names this very transmission, it is your organisation's only filing on that master bill, and the record's packages and containers agree with what was sent, the CSN number and date are recorded and the filing turns ACCEPTED on its own. Its history marks it as read from ICEGATE's own record, with no acknowledgement file behind it. An amendment or a deletion is never settled this way — those wait for the _ACK — and a rejection never appears on the record at all.

To ask on the spot instead of waiting for the next sweep: when a filing is SUBMITTED or FILED_UNTRACKED and the page's What customs has on record section already says Customs holds this filing, a Get the CSN number button sits under it. It asks ICEGATE's public enquiry about the filing exactly as it was sent from here. Nothing needs uploading again, and the same conditions apply.

Since September 2026 the public enquiry carries the CSN number itself. Where it leaves the number out — filings accepted before then may show none — your organisation's own ICEGATE portal login is asked instead, if an admin has saved one. Where neither can say, or customs' record names a different transmission, the button says why and nothing changes. Record the ACK file when it arrives.

Only the person who created the filing, or an organisation admin, sees the button.

Do I still need the ACK? Yes. Keep it and drop it on the filing when ICEGATE emails it: it is customs' own file, the only one that carries a rejection's reasons, and the one anyone outside asks for. Dropped on a filing already accepted from the record, an acknowledgement that agrees is kept and becomes the transmission's own answer; one that disagrees is refused for a person to settle.

Emailing a CSN accepted this way. Until the ACK is dropped there is no file to attach, so the mail carries the CSN file alone. The cargo identification number customs gave is still shown on the bill it belongs to. On a single master bill it goes on the master. On a master with one house bill it goes on the house, because the master of a consolidation has none. On a master with several house bills, customs' record doesn't say which house the number belongs to, so none is shown.

Other things you can do with a filing

    BL tracking (in the header) — look up a bill of lading on ICEGATE: every accepted filing against it, the carrier's manifest, and the arrival status, read as one shipment. Each CSN's row menu has a Track entry that opens it with the bill already filled in. Inside a filing, a Track at customs button sits in the header when it has one master bill, and when it has several the consignment table carries a track icon on every master row — one lookup per bill, not one for the filing. The result can be shared by link or QR code — it is public data, so no sign-in is needed to open it.Customs lookup (under ? in the header) — who has filed against a master bill, what they declared, and whether the master is still open to you, without starting a filing to ask. See What customs already holds.Share a read-only link — an expiring, revocable link to a checklist view, for someone outside your organisation. They see the filing; they cannot change it.Print / export — the full record, for your file.Version history — every transmission on this filing, with what customs said about each.A filing with many master bills reads as a table. When a CSN carries two or more master consignments (a shipping line's or an agent's filing can carry fifty), 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 — with a search box and filters from eight rows up. Open a row to see every field of that consignment exactly as the full record shows it. The same table opens on SCMTR JSON upload, where a problem in the list jumps into the row it belongs to. Printing always prints the whole record, rows open or not. On a phone each row is a card.

What an org admin can do

    Change a declaration's status directly, in any direction, on any declaration including a draft, and record a filing made elsewhere from a CSN typed off the portal when nobody has the acknowledgement file.Amend a filing someone else is already amending. Ordinarily one amendment draft exists at a time, so two colleagues cannot build rival amendments off one CSN; an admin is exempt.Discard anyone's abandoned clone draft, freeing the filing for a clean start.Delete a draft created by anyone in the organisation.

Every one of these is written to the audit log with the admin's name on it. A filing agent running a client's account (and that client's account lead) may do all four in the client too; making someone the client's admin, removing its people and exporting its audit log stay with the client's own admins.

Recording a filing made outside SCMTR

A filing made on the ICEGATE portal or in other software — including a draft kept here that you downloaded and filed on ICEGATE yourself — is recorded with CSNs → Record a filing made elsewhere:

    Upload the file that was filed (the F one, not an amendment).Upload the acknowledgement ICEGATE sent for it — an acceptance or a refusal. It has to answer that file on its control number and job number. With no acknowledgement file, an organisation admin can type the CSN and its date off the portal instead — or anyone can drop the filed CSN on SCMTR JSON upload and choose amend or delete, which reads ICEGATE's own record of the filing and records it from that.If the file is a draft kept here, the outcome is recorded onto that draft; a filing never kept here is created, accepted under its CSN. Amend this filing then works normally.

Any member may do this with the acknowledgement. The version kept on record is made from the file you filed, not from the draft as it stands, and a CSN another of your filings already holds is refused with a link to that filing. A copy of the draft that was prepared for Sign & upload and never sent is set aside at the same moment, so it can never go afterwards. A refusal of a filing never kept here is not recorded: it granted no CSN to amend, and there is no draft here to correct.

The acknowledgement drop on the CSN filing page is for filings sent from SCMTR. Dropped for a draft you filed yourself, it explains the reply, records nothing and points here.

This is also where the inspector sends you if you upload an amendment whose CSN it cannot find: until the accepted filing exists here, there is nothing for the amendment to attach to, and building one on an unverifiable CSN reference is not something the platform will do.

Is there a video walkthrough?

Yes — 63 short films, one job each. Each is linked from the page it walks through as well, and none of them shows a customer's data.

They are all on the SCMTR channel, which is where a new one appears first.

Getting help

    The assistant — the chat button inside the app — answers questions about SCMTR filing and about the product, from this knowledge base. It also knows the form itself: ask where a field is ("where do I put the destination port?", "I can't see the ports on the first step") and it answers with the guided step, the section heading and the label as it appears on screen — starting from the screen you asked from — with the JSON key alongside for matching an error message. It says when a field is folded away behind a summary line, when it is filled in automatically, and whether it is the master consignment's or the house bill's. While it works it names the pages it is reading; the answer then appears as it is written, and Sources under it names the pages it drew on — open one to read the whole thing. A question that needs two pages (the rule on one, what to do about it on another) is answered from both, and where two pages disagree it says which says what.The Feedback button in the header reports a problem or suggests something, and captures the page you were on.? in the header holds everything you read or look up: the SCMTR guide, the reference, this help section, the FAQ, the customs lookup, the service status page and the roadmap. They open inside the app, with the same header, so you are never sent out to the public site to read them.E-mail. What the platform sends you, why, and the two you can switch off (Settings → Weekly summary and occasional tips) are in E-mail from SCMTR — including why a colleague's invitation e-mail may not have arrived.

Privacy

Your declarations are visible only to your own organisation; the separation is enforced in the database, not just in the interface. Every change is written to an audit log with who made it.

Do you keep the files I upload?

Yes. Since 17 September 2026 every file uploaded to SCMTR is kept: declarations, acknowledgements, shipping line filings and customs' replies, on whichever screen you upload them — including the free check without signing in, files e-mailed to the checking address, and a signed file you send to customs from here. A file is kept for two years after we last receive it, or for as long as a filing here still relies on it, and then deleted automatically. The screens you upload from say so, and you are asked to accept the updated terms the next time you open SCMTR.

What they are used for: to help you when you write to support about a rejection — the document itself rather than a description of it; to link a filing with its replies and amendments over time; and to improve how SCMTR reads and checks files. They are not sold, not used for advertising, and not used to train AI models.

Three things bound it. A platform super administrator can open a kept file, and that is by role, not a permission anybody can be granted. Every opening is recorded, so who read which file is answerable. And you can ask for a file to be deleted at any time.

A SAM / SDM is still read and edited entirely in your browser, which is what lets a file far over the usual upload limit open at all; it is also uploaded in the background and kept, like any other file. Saving it keeps your corrections for your organisation to come back to.

One thing worth thinking about before you upload: a file somebody sent you to check names their consignor, consignee and cargo, and you cannot consent on their behalf. If that matters for a particular document, send support the error code instead of the file.

What is recorded when support staff act on my behalf?

Two things, and it is worth being precise. The session — its start and its end — is recorded against the staff member who ran it. The actions taken during it are recorded on your account, exactly as if you had taken them, because the platform is genuinely operating as you at that point. The two are kept together: because the session's start and end times are on record, anything on your account inside that window can be told apart from what you did yourself, and the platform's administrators see it labelled that way. Your organisation sees a banner for the whole time a support session is open.

Still stuck on this?

The assistant answers from this exact page and the rest of our reference material, and names the documents behind every answer.

Have the file? Check it free — no sign-in

General information only — not legal or customs-compliance advice, and it may not reflect the most current ICEGATE/CBIC requirements. Verify against the official sources, or a licensed customs broker, before filing.