The vessel call number (VCN)

Every CSN names one ship and one of that ship's arrivals. The VCN is the number for that arrival, and it is what your filing carries as its conveyance reference. This page follows it end to end: what it is, where it comes to you from, when it exists at all, how it reaches the filing, how it goes out of date, what is checked on your behalf and what that check proves — and what is left for you to do.

What is a VCN, and why does the filing want one beside the IMO number?

A VCN belongs to one call of one ship at one port. The port issues it when the line asks for that arrival, and it reads as a four-character port code, the year and a serial, like NSA12026081299. It is not a property of the hull and not a property of the service: change the ship, the port or the arrival and it is a different number.

So the VCN in your CSN starts with the code of the port you file at — NSA… at Nhava Sheva, MAA… at Chennai. Every accepted filing on record names its own port's VCN; filings sent with another port's (the ship's previous call, say) were accepted only when sent again with the right one, and SCMTR points the difference out before you file. The one pair seen to cross is Haldia's HAL… calls, filed at Kolkata.

That is why the filing wants both. The IMO number says which hull; the VCN says which of that hull's arrivals. A ship calls at your port many times a year, and customs is matching your CSN to one of them — it cross-validates your filing against the vessel operator's own manifest for that voyage, and the conveyance reference is the value that pairs the two. A hull identifier on its own would name the ship and not the voyage, and there would be nothing to reconcile your bill against.

One call carries more than one number, and only this one belongs in this field. The carrier's own voyage number off the bill of lading — 629W and the like — is not a VCN. For the VCN against the rotation number and the IGM number, and for the parts the number is built from, see Identifiers and tracking.

Where does a VCN come to you from?

Three routes, and they are not equal.

From customs' own list, inside the filing. When you choose the ship, the calls customs holds for that hull come back with it — each with its port, its expected arrival, and, where customs gives one, the date the port registered the rotation. Use writes that call's VCN into the conveyance reference. This is the only route where the number arrives already matched against customs' list. It fills a little more than the number: where the port of reporting and the message receiver are blank or still your organisation's default it sets them to the call's port, and it sets the vessel type and mode where those are blank. It says what it filled, and it never overwrites something you typed.

From the carrier's arrival notice. The line applied for the VCN, so its arrival notice is where the number reaches most filers — usually printed under VCN or call number. It is the same number this field wants: type it in. Where it disagrees with what customs' public enquiry lists, the arrival notice is the one to act on, because customs decides on the filing rather than on what its enquiry lists.

By asking the line or its agent. They applied for it, so they know whether it has been issued and whether it has been replaced. One message settles it when the arrival notice is not recent.

Nothing else carries it. There is no rule to work one out from — the number exists only once a port has registered that arrival — so a number in the box that nobody typed came from the first route, out of customs' own list for the ship you chose.

Before there is a draft at all. There is no standalone ship lookup here yet: the vessel search lives inside a filing. So when the desk asks "has the port issued the call for that ship yet?" before anyone has opened a job, there are two routes — run ICEGATE's own VCN enquiry, which needs the ship's IMO number and no login (see Where is my cargo?), or start a draft and type the ship on the first step. A draft costs nothing and goes nowhere; nothing reaches customs until you sign it. BL tracking and ? → Customs lookup will not answer this — both take a master bill of lading and a port, and tell you who has filed against that bill.

When does a VCN exist at all?

Once the port has issued it for one particular call — and that is a step the shipping line has to ask for, not something that happens when a voyage is planned.

You never apply for one. A forwarder, an NVOCC or a consolidator has no part in issuing a VCN and no registration to have missed. The vessel operator or its agent asks the port for the number; the port registers the call and passes it to customs. Where no VCN exists yet, the next step is the line's and the port's, not yours — which is also why the line is the right party to chase.

That is ICEGATE's own account. Its SCMTR FAQ says a VCN "is a unique number assigned for every voyage of any vessel by the respective port of call" (Q21), and its worked example of an arrival opens with the vessel operator applying for the VCN, "which will be assigned by port authorities" (Q34). CBIC's specification for the messages a port sends customs describes the same number from the port's side: a unique number the operator assigns for a voyage, built from a port code, the year and a running serial — the shape of every VCN you will see (NSA1 + 2026 + a serial), even though real ones are cut a little differently from the specification's own example. So two things happen before a VCN can be in customs' list: the line or its agent asks the port for one, and the port registers the call and sends it on to customs.

How far ahead of the ETA that happens is not something ICEGATE publishes, but its enquiry shows it: each call comes back with the date the port registered the rotation, and on the calls seen on 7 September 2026 that date ran 2 to 19 days before the arrival — six calls at four ports, so an observation rather than a statistic, and one to read as "at least", since the enquiry suggests a call can be listed before its rotation is registered. It agrees with what filers report, that a VCN is sometimes not on ICEGATE until under ten days before the ETA. What follows is that a filing prepared early can be prepared before its VCN exists, and a search that finds the ship but no call at your port is usually seeing exactly that.

Can you reuse the last one for the same ship? No. A VCN is issued for one arrival and is spent on it. A weekly service calling the same berth with the same hull gets a fresh number for every call, because the number identifies the call and not the ship, the service or the berth. Last month's number names a voyage that has already sailed, and customs' cross-check against the vessel operator's manifest is for this one, so an old number reconciles with nothing. It is also why a VCN can never be a standing reference you keep against a carrier the way a service code is.

Customs lists several calls for my ship. Which one is mine?

Match the expected arrival, not just the port. Customs answers about roughly two months either side of the day it is asked, so a liner service on a monthly loop legitimately returns two or three calls at the same port. The port narrows it; the date decides it.

Put the arrival notice beside the list and compare its ETA against each call's expected arrival. On a CSN here the Arrival card does this for you once it has the cargo's day — from the line's tracking, or the ETA your team entered — and says whether the VCN's call fits it. If two calls at that port are weeks apart, the one nearer the ETA is almost certainly yours. If neither matches closely, do not split the difference — expected arrivals move, but a fortnight's gap is a different sailing. Ask the line's agent rather than choosing, because the wrong call of the right ship is a filing customs cannot reconcile and one that looks entirely normal on screen.

The list puts the calls still to come first. A CSN is filed for an arrival that has not happened yet, so both the ship search and the voyage list on the ship step lead with calls arriving today or later, soonest first, each marked with how far off it is — "in 5 days". Calls that have already arrived follow under Already arrived, most recent first and greyed out. Arrivals more than a week old are folded behind Show earlier calls while anything nearer is on offer; they are never removed, and a call your filing already names always stays in view. At your port of reporting, the calls there come first within each group. The line that says "this filing names no call yet, and customs now lists…" names the soonest call still to come at your port, never one that has already arrived.

A call whose arrival date has already passed is stated, not flagged, and it is not by itself the wrong call: a filing made after the ship has berthed properly names the call that has arrived. What a passed date does tell you is that the shipping line has very probably filed its manifest by then — and after that a fresh CSN is not the route: ICES Advisory 37/2026 (18 September 2026) has the CSN filed before the manifest, and Sign & upload refuses one on a bill the manifest already covers. If the manifest does not cover your bill yet, file it, but do not count on being able to correct the call afterwards — no amendment can change the VCN.

Every call customs lists for the ship is long past. Then customs has not published the ship's next arrival yet — the port issues a VCN only days before an arrival, at the line's request — and there is nothing to pick. The ship search still shows the hull as a full match you can choose, marked Next arrival not on customs' list yet, with its last call named as evidence the hull calls India. Choose it: the IMO number, the ship's name and line, and the vessel type and mode all go on the job now. The ship step then says the same thing in words, keeps the old calls behind Show past calls rather than offering them, and opens the conveyance reference box. Type the VCN there if the line's arrival notice already gives one; otherwise leave it blank — it is needed before you sign, not before you save. A saved job that names a ship and no call is watched, and you are emailed when customs lists a call for that ship at your port.

Can I put a placeholder in the VCN box until the real one arrives?

No — and the reason is not that anything here will stop you.

Nothing on this platform blocks a filing over the conveyance reference. A number nobody has seen customs list is described, never refused, so an invented, borrowed or last-month's number goes to customs exactly as you typed it. The check will say customs has not listed it, which is also what it says about a perfectly good number typed off an arrival notice — so it will not save you from this.

Nor is leaving it empty the way out. The conveyance reference is mandatory on the filings that declare a cargo movement — arrival, departure and domestic movement — and on a cargo confirmation, so on an arrival the field is marked required and a filing with it blank does not validate. See What accepted filings actually carry.

What is on the other side is customs' own list of refusals: 20 Invalid Voyage Call Number-VCN, 24 Invalid Rotation/Voyage Call Number, and the catch-all 700 Error-Refile, which ICEGATE publishes no explanation of at all — the checklist for a 700 has to be worked by elimination, and a conveyance reference that is not the VCN customs issued is one of its five items. A VCN is also what customs pairs your CSN with the vessel operator's manifest on, so a number that names nothing is a filing that cannot reconcile.

And "file now, amend later" is the expensive version of the same idea. The VCN is the one thing no CSN amendment can change — ICES Advisory 37/2026 (18 September 2026) excludes it and the rotation number outright — and your amendment window for everything else is not a date either: it may close the moment another party's CSN against that master bill is accepted, without notice — customs' error list has 320 for that, not yet seen on a reply — and if customs does answer 320, the correction is a matter for the shipping line and your jurisdictional customs officer. Filing on a placeholder buys you a correction you are not allowed to make.

If the ETA is close and customs still lists no call, ask the carrier for the VCN off its arrival notice. That is the fast route, and it is a real number.

Why a VCN goes out of date at all

Two consequences follow from the number belonging to one call, and both bite filers who work ahead.

If the carrier substitutes the vessel, the VCN changes with it. A different hull is a different IMO number and a different call, so the number your filing carries stops belonging to anything. Customs stops listing it. This is reported by filers rather than something we have watched happen; it is the most common way a prepared filing goes stale.

A VCN may not exist yet when you prepare. The port registers the rotation for an arrival some days ahead, not months — 2 to 19 days on the calls observed above — so a filing prepared a month out can find no call at all, or find a call that is later replaced.

A delay, a roll, a blank sailing, a change of port — which of these changes my filing?

Four things carriers say, with four different answers.

"The vessel is running late." Nothing on your filing changes. The voyage block carries no date, and the itinerary rows carry ports and a mode of transport rather than dates, so a slipped ETA touches nothing you have typed and the VCN stays the VCN. There is nothing to amend. What a slip is worth is one habit: check the call again nearer the new arrival, because the further a date moves the more likely the line reworks the sailing behind it. (If customs' own list moves the day, you may be emailed about it — see Why did I get an email saying my ship's arrival moved?)

"The cargo has been rolled to the next sailing." Carriers say rolled; these pages say substituted, because the effect on your filing is the same shape. A roll usually means a different hull — a different IMO number and a different call, so both fields move — and sometimes a reissued master bill of lading, which is a bigger problem than either (see Changing or withdrawing a filing customs already accepted). Ask the line for the revised arrival notice and work it as a vessel change.

"The call is blanked", or "we are omitting your port." The ship still exists and may still be listed for other ports; the call at your port does not. What you see here is the call dropping off customs' list — which looks identical to a substitution, so do not conclude a hull swap from the notice alone. One message to the agent says which it was, and the fix differs: a substitution gives you a new hull to search for, an omitted call gives you a later call of the same ship, or a different ship altogether.

"The ship is calling at a different port now." This is the one with the longest tail, and the VCN is the smallest part of it. A VCN belongs to one call of one ship at one port, so a different port is never an edited VCN — it is a different call with a different number, and the old one does not survive the move. Everything keyed to the port moves with it: the port of reporting, the header's receiver, and which customs location your filing sits at, which decides which officer can help you. On a draft that is a handful of fields and the platform fills most of them when you pick the new call. On a filing customs has already accepted it is a bigger change than a vessel swap, and it may not be an amendment at all — see the new ship arrives at a different port, which also carries the route a filer took through it in September 2026, and the condition that made it work.

ICEGATE's list also carries four codes reading "… Can Not be Filed as Per VCN Status" (245–248), which say a call has reached a status that closes it to further filing. ICEGATE does not publish what those statuses are, and all four name the vessel operator's own manifest messages rather than a CSN — none has been seen returned to a CSN filed here.

What happens if you file on a call customs has replaced

Customs is cross-validating your CSN against the vessel operator's own manifest for that voyage, so a conveyance reference that names nothing is a filing that does not reconcile. The refusal we would expect is a 700 — the catch-all that names no field, and whose checklist here already carries a conveyance reference that is not the VCN customs issued — but that is inference, not something we have seen returned for this cause. No acknowledgement in our hands has yet been traced to a substituted vessel. Treat it as a real risk with an unproven error code.

What the platform checks, and when

The calls the search shows are fetched from customs when you choose the ship, and the VCN you pick with Use is written into the filing once. From then on that number is compared against customs' list of the ship's calls:

when you open a draft's ship step in the guided filing, and again on its review step;when you open the full form — a line at the top, which you can dismiss, shown only where the check has found the call replaced, at another port, or a different call at your port;before you sign, on either signing route, and before a signed file is uploaded. There, if the last answer is more than fifteen minutes old, customs is asked again before anything is sent, so the filing goes out checked against what customs said minutes earlier rather than hours. Two exceptions: after an empty answer, or one that did not arrive, the platform waits a short while before asking again on its own and shows the last answer it has meanwhile; and where live enquiries to customs are switched off, it shows the last answer it has and says when that was;on the filing's own page once it has gone, for as long as the filing can still be amended — against customs' latest answer as the platform already holds it, with no new request made, and, once the shipping line's own filing is on customs' record, against the ship and call that filing names;when a CSN made anywhere — here or in other software — is opened on SCMTR JSON upload. Customs is asked again if its last answer about the ship is more than fifteen minutes old, and the line is amber only where customs lists a different call of the ship at your port, has stopped listing the call, or lists it at another port — or where the call the file names had arrived before the file was made and customs lists a later call at your port nearer the file's date, which is how last voyage's VCN looks on a ship that calls every week or two (a rule drawn from one live enquiry, and one that can be amber harmlessly on a file made a few days after its ship berthed). A file dated before the span customs' answer covers is not judged at all. See Is the VCN on this file the right call?;and with nobody on the page at all. The platform keeps reading customs' list for the ships your open filings name, more often for a ship about to arrive, so what the pages above read is usually a recent answer — and each of them names when it was.

Wherever the result is shown it names when customs last answered, and Check again (Check now, on the filing's page) asks customs now — one request for each click, whatever the platform would otherwise have waited for. On the filing's page, that click also nudges the row on your CSNs list, so the badge there catches up with what you have just been told rather than arguing with it.

What the background reading writes to you about: if the call your sent filing names drops off customs' list, the person who created that filing is emailed and the row on your CSN filing list is badged Not on customs' list. If a draft was saved with a ship but no VCN, because the port had not issued one yet, you are emailed when customs' list carries a call for that ship at your port that was not on record when you last worked on the job, and the row says VCN now available. The email says customs lists one rather than that the port has just issued one — the list is what was read — and where customs gives the rotation's registration date, it quotes that as the day the port registered the rotation.

The third thing it writes about is the arrival moving — see Why did I get an email saying my ship's arrival moved? below.

What is not checked. Apart from a CSN opened on SCMTR JSON upload (above), all of this is about CSN filings created here and nothing else — and the uploaded-file check is a one-off reading when you open the file, with no watching, no badge and no email afterwards. A SAM / SDM you open under Shipping line filing, and anything you look up on BL tracking or ? → Customs lookup, carry no voyage check at all: their VCNs are never compared against customs' list of a ship's calls, and a clean-looking Shipping line filing screen is not agreement about the voyage. If you need a manifest's call checked, take its IMO number to ICEGATE's own VCN enquiry.

BL tracking does show one thing from that list: the expected arrival for the call a CSN on the bill names, and the day it moved from if it has moved — until the ship is in. It shows it only when the platform already holds that ship's calls, which it keeps reading for the ships filings made here name; a lookup on BL tracking never asks customs about the ship on the visitor's behalf. That is the link to send your customer: they see the current day whenever they open it, with no email from anyone. It is a date read off a list, not a check that the call is right.

Why did I get an email saying my ship's arrival moved?

Because customs' list of calls for your ship now gives a different expected arrival day for the call your filing names than it did when you last worked on the ship and the call. Each call on that list carries an expected arrival day, and the platform keeps the day a call moved from rather than overwriting it — so a call moved from the 12th to the 14th no longer reads as one that always said the 14th.

What you get, for a draft or a filing already sent:

One email per move, naming both days — the new one and the one it moved from. A date that flips back and forth costs at most one email each way, never a stream of them.An Arrival moved badge on the row in your CSN filing list.The filing's own page shows it beside the voyage reference: ETA 14/09/2026 (moved from 12/09/2026 on 10/09/2026).BL tracking shows the same expected arrival, and the day it moved from, to anyone looking up the bill — see above.

A move to a day already gone is not written about, and neither is a move you had in front of you when you picked the call.

Nothing needs amending because of it. The CSN does not carry an arrival date — the voyage block has no date field — and the call itself is the same call, so the VCN on your filing is still right. What a large move is worth is one question to the carrier: a slip of a day or two is ordinary, but a long one can be the start of a reworked sailing, and a roll or a substitution does change your filing (see A delay, a roll, a blank sailing, a change of port).

How much this proves — said plainly. As of September 2026 nobody has yet seen customs revise a call's expected arrival day. The watch was built to find out whether customs updates the day at all, so it is watching for something unproven: an email from it is new evidence, and no email is no sign the ship is on time. The day is also only what the port recorded for the call — a day with no time of day, not the shipping line's schedule, which may be more precise and more current. For a ship that matters, the carrier's arrival notice remains the document to go by.

What is actually sent to customs when it checks the call?

The ship's IMO number and a range of dates. Nothing else.

The question being asked is customs' own public VCN enquiry — the enquiry anyone can run on ICEGATE's site without signing in, which answers "which calls does this hull have?" Nothing about your bill of lading, your consignees, your PAN, your organisation or your filing is in the request, and nothing in it identifies you as the asker. What comes back is the ship's calls: the VCN, the port, the expected arrival, the rotation and the line running the call — public information about a vessel, not about your cargo.

No ICEGATE credential is used for it, and no quota of yours is drawn on: a lookup counts against no submission and consumes nothing you have paid for.

The same is true of the reading that happens when nobody is on the page. It is the same public enquiry about the same hulls, and it asks nothing about your consignment.

What the answer does and does not prove

Customs' enquiry answers one question: which calls it lists for this hull within about two months either side of the day it was asked. Read the result with that in mind.

The VCN is among the calls customs lists. The call is current. If that call is at a different port from your port of reporting, the page says so — one of the two is not what the line named, and its arrival notice settles which.The VCN was among the calls customs listed earlier, and is not now. The strongest sign the check can give that the call has been replaced; a substituted vessel is what filers report behind it. The page names the earlier answer and the calls customs lists now, at your port first.The VCN is not one customs has listed for this ship at all. It was typed in, or picked before anyone here had seen the ship's calls. That does not make it incorrect — customs decides on the filing, not on the enquiry — and it may simply not have been issued when the ship was last looked up. If customs does list a call at your port for this ship, the page shows it so you can compare against the arrival notice before signing.Customs lists calls for the ship, but none at your port. Usually timing: the VCN for your arrival may not be issued yet. Check again nearer the ETA rather than typing the carrier's voyage number in its place — a voyage number is not a VCN, and it is on the 700 checklist.Customs lists no calls for the ship at all. No call at any Indian port across the span customs was asked about is a strong sign this is not your ship. Check the IMO number against the line's arrival notice.Customs could not be reached. Nothing is concluded. The VCN stays as written and is checked again when you sign.

One exception to "no calls anywhere means the wrong hull". That reading holds only for a filing whose arrival falls inside the span customs answers about — roughly two months either side of the day it is asked. A ship whose next Indian arrival is beyond that has nothing to return, so an empty answer proves nothing about the hull. If you are preparing ten weeks out, an empty list is the expected result and not a signal: leave the conveyance reference blank, save the draft, and let the VCN now available notice find you — or come back once the arrival is inside two months and check then.

The same span works the other way, and it is why a call disappearing is not always a call replaced. A call whose arrival has aged out of that view is not reported as a vanished call: the span explains the absence, and nothing is concluded from it either way.

What it will never do

It will not change your number. Not on the ship step, not at the door, not from the background reading, not ever. The VCN you chose stays as you left it until you pick another yourself, and nothing is filed for you.

It will not cry wolf where it writes to you. Before you are emailed about a call that has gone, or the row on your CSN filing list is badged, customs has to have said it on two separate answers, hours apart. The notices you meet while the filing is in your hands — the ship step, the filing's own page, the pause before signing — read customs' latest answer, so they can say it on one: they describe, they never change or send anything, and getting past them is one click. And if customs answers nothing about every ship at once, that is read as a bad moment at a gateway rather than as news; it is recorded against those ships, so nothing at all is concluded from that answer — no notice, no badge, no pause and no mail — until customs answers properly again.

What that caution costs you, said plainly. Waiting for customs to say it twice is hours, not minutes, and it delays the email and the CSN filing list badge — the two things that reach a filer who is not looking. The notices you meet inside the filing do not wait, so they are ahead of the mail. Check now asks customs immediately and updates what the page tells you; it does not shortcut the two-answer rule behind the mail and the badge. That delay runs against a deadline with no date on it — the shipping line's own filing, which can be accepted at any moment — so if the carrier has already told you the ship has changed, act on the carrier. Do not wait to be emailed about something you already know.

It will not pause you on a doubt. Signing waits only on strong evidence — a call we ourselves saw customs return that is no longer listed, a call at a different port from the one you are reporting to, or a number customs has never listed while it does list a different call at your port. Everything else is said quietly and never stops the filing. Where it does pause, Continue anyway is always there: customs decides, not us.

The one case it cannot see

Customs' enquiry is keyed by the hull your filing names. If a substitution is recorded only under the new ship, and the old call stays listed under the old one, there is nothing on the old ship's list for the check to notice. The carrier's revised arrival notice is what settles that, and the ship step's The ship has changed — find the new one clears the vessel so you can search the new hull by name and pick its call.

Is this a safety net I can plan around?

Treat it as a second pair of eyes, not a guarantee. It is worth being exact about the ways you can hear nothing while something has changed:

Customs did not answer, or answered nothing about every ship at once. Nothing is concluded, no notice, no badge, no mail — deliberately, because that is a bad hour at a gateway and not every voyage in the country vanishing.The call was never on customs' list to drop off — a VCN typed off an arrival notice, for instance. There is no earlier answer for it to have fallen out of, so it is never badged and never mailed. The filing's page still describes it whenever you look.The vessel has no IMO number. Customs' enquiry is keyed by IMO, so on a non-IMO filing there is no hull to ask about: no calls to fetch, no badge, no background reading and no email, ever. Silence there means nothing at all.A draft whose call has gone gets the badge, not an email. The emails a draft earns are the opposite case — a ship saved without a call, when customs first lists one — and a moved arrival for the call it already names.Age. Watching is measured from when the filing was created, not from how far off the arrival is. A job prepared a long time before a much-delayed sailing can pass out of it while the ship is still to come.Where live enquiries to customs are switched off, every surface shows the last answer on record and says so in as many words. A timestamp that stops moving is how you would see it, and Check now answers that live checks are switched off here rather than pretending to have asked.

So, near the ETA, open the filing and press Check now yourself, and treat the mail as a bonus. And none of it replaces the carrier's revised arrival notice: the one substitution this can never see is the one customs records only under the new ship.

The carrier says my call is fine. Can I keep it and clear the notice?

Keep it — and know that not all of it can be dismissed.

If the arrival notice still names the call, that is the document you answer for, and customs decides on the filing rather than on what its public enquiry lists. Nothing here blocks you: sign, file and amend exactly as you would have.

What you can clear: the line at the top of the full form dismisses for that sitting, and the pause before signing has Continue anyway.

What you cannot: the notice on the filing's page and the badge on your CSN filing list are descriptions of customs' latest answer, and there is no "I have checked this, keep what I have" action for either. They clear when what they are about changes — you pick a different call or ship, customs lists the call again, or customs' own record for this bill turns out to name your very ship and call, which outranks the call's absence from the ship's list and stands the notice down to a quiet line. Short of that, a filing you have decided is correct can carry the badge until the call comes back, or until the filing passes out of what is watched at all — its cargo found on the carrier's manifest, say.

So treat the badge as a remark rather than a fault: it does not mark the filing wrong, it does not go to customs, and it stops nothing. On a shared desk it is worth a note to whoever else works the list, because they will see it too.

If I file against the check, is that recorded?

Not as a decision. Nothing marks a filing as "sent against advice", there is no overridden flag on the record, nothing about the choice goes to customs, and nothing about it appears in the activity an administrator can export.

What is kept is customs' answer rather than your judgement of it: for a filing sent from here, the verdict on its conveyance reference at the moment the file went out — whether your VCN was among the calls customs had last listed for that ship, and what customs listed at your port instead. That is there so a refusal weeks later can be read against what was true on the day, and it is what the refile checklist's voyage step reads instead of saying "only customs can answer this".

Be precise about what it proves. It records what customs' public enquiry had listed at that time. It is not a record of what customs validated your filing against, and it is not evidence that your call was right or wrong — the enquiry is not the last word, which is the same reason it never blocks you. It is kept only for filings sent from here since the check existed, and only for a ship customs had been asked about; earlier filings and never-looked-up ships carry none.

One thing it is not: a history. Each surface shows customs' latest answer and names when it was given; there is no log of earlier checks to page through or export. If you need to show a line what customs listed on a given day, take it from the filing's page while it is showing, or run ICEGATE's own VCN enquiry yourself.

What to do when you are told

The call is no longer listed, and the filing is still a draft. Open it. The ship step shows the current calls, those still to come first and the one at your port first among them; Use writes that VCN by your click. If the carrier changed the ship rather than the call, find the new hull by name first — see Finding the ship you are filing for.

The call is no longer listed, and the filing was accepted. Act now: another party's CSN against the same master bill of lading may shut your window — customs' error list has 320 for any change after it, not yet seen on a reply; the line's manifest and then Sea Entry Inwards each narrow what is left before that. But do not expect an amendment to fix the VCN itself. ICES Advisory 37/2026 (18 September 2026) states that the conveyance reference and rotation number are the one thing a CSN amendment can never carry, before Sea Entry Inwards or after, approved or not. This page previously pointed you at exactly that route, and the notice on the filing's page offered Amend on Vessel details for it; since 19 September 2026 it offers no amendment, and tells you instead to raise the VCN with the shipping line and your jurisdictional customs officer. See what that leaves you with and Two companies, one master bill of lading — and raise it with the shipping line and your jurisdictional customs officer as early as you can, rather than waiting on an amendment to settle it.

Customs lists no call for your ship at your port yet. That is usually timing rather than the wrong ship — the VCN for your arrival may not have been issued. Check again nearer the ETA. Do not put the carrier's own voyage number in the field: a voyage number is not a VCN, and it is on the 700 checklist.

Customs lists no call for your ship at any Indian port across the span it was asked about. That is a strong sign the hull is not the one on your bill of lading — unless the arrival is beyond that span altogether, which for a filing prepared many weeks out is the ordinary case. Check the IMO number against the arrival notice. See Finding the ship you are filing for.

Related

Finding the ship you are filing for — finding the right hull, telling namesakes apart, a feeder against a mother vessel, a ship with no IMO number, and a bill that says TBN.Identifiers and tracking — the VCN against the rotation number and the IGM number, and who mints which.What accepted filings actually carry — the conveyance reference as a field: which events require it, and how to type it.Which port goes where — a ship calling at more than one Indian port, and whose VCN you file.How a customs outcome reaches you — what the filing's page shows after it has gone, and who is emailed.Two companies, one master bill of lading — the deadline a substitution runs into.Why customs rejects a filing — 700 and the voyage codes.