Customs filing

File your customs declarations from inside the shipment you are already working on. No second system, no re-keying: the shipment fills most of the form, you complete the rest, and the customs authority's answer comes back onto the same screen.

This page covers the whole flow using Singapore TradeWeb as the example. The form, submission mode and status vocabulary depend on the country and integration. Follow the relevant country guide; integrations on separate tabs do not necessarily use this wizard.

The Customs V2 tab showing every filing that applies to a shipment

Where to find it

Open a shipment and go to the Customs V2 tab.

It is there on ocean, air and generic shipments, at two levels:

Most customs filings are made per house bill: one declaration for each consignment, because each one has its own shipper, consignee and goods. So the house-level tab is where you will spend most of your time. The master-level tab is for seeing every house bill's status together and for submitting several at once.

If you do not see a Customs V2 tab, the module has not been switched on for your company yet. Get in touch and we will enable it.

Before you file

The wizard fills the declaration from the shipment, so the quality of the filing depends on the quality of the shipment record. Before you start, make sure the house bill has:

• Routing — vessel and voyage, port of loading, port of discharge, and the relevant dates

• Parties — shipper, consignee and notify party, with full addresses

• Cargo — packages, package type, gross weight, volume, and the goods description

• Containers, where the cargo is containerised

• Commercial invoice values, if the declaration needs them

Anything missing here you will simply have to type into the declaration instead — and it will not be saved back to the shipment.

Step 1 — Choose what to file

The tab opens on the filings that apply to this shipment's route, as cards.

Each card is one declaration type for one country. Singapore TradeWeb, for example, offers:

Cards appear only for filings your company is set up for and that match this shipment's route — you will not be offered a Japanese filing on a shipment that never touches Japan.

Deselect anything you do not need, then continue.

Filing cards for a Singapore export — TradeWeb and eCO

If nothing appears

Two different messages, meaning two different things:

• "No filings configured yet for this shipment's route, but Fr8Labs supports it." — we integrate with this country; your company just is not set up for it. The card shows a Not enabled badge and a Get in touch to enable → link.

• "No customs integration available for this shipment's route." — we do not currently file in that country. The link still reaches us; tell us where you need it.

There is also a 🌍 Show all countries we integrate with → button under the cards, which reveals everywhere else we file.

Step 2 — Review and fill

This is where the work happens.

The form is laid out the way your customs portal lays it out. For Singapore that means the same tabs, in the same order, under the same wording TradeWeb itself uses — Header, Party, Cargo, Out-Trans (or In-Trans on an import), Ref. Documents, Invoice, Items and Summary. You are not learning a new form; you are filling in the one you already know, pre-populated.

Under the fields you will see a running count:

31 auto-filled from FMS · 8 from commercial invoice · 12 need manual entry

The first number is what the shipment already answered. The last is what only you can answer — declaring agent identifiers, procedure codes, certificate details, and anything the shipment record does not carry. That is the actual work of the filing, and the wizard's job is to make it as small as it can honestly be.

The Parties section, pre-filled from the shipment

Anything you change here changes the declaration, not the shipment. The shipment record is left alone.

Items

Goods lines come from the shipment's commodities. You can edit the first line directly and add more below — up to 50 items on a Singapore declaration, which is the limit TradeWeb itself imposes.

If something is missing

Required fields are flagged before you can submit, with a summary at the top of the form naming every one. A declaration will not go out incomplete.

The validation summary, naming every required field still empty

Step 3 — Choose how it goes out

This is the most important control on the screen.

For several countries you can file a safe draft first and the real thing later:

The submit button changes to match, so it is always clear which one you are about to do: Submit — Draft in TradeWeb or Submit to Customs.

The Philippines works the same way — Validate only checks and stores the waybill at the VASP without the Bureau of Customs seeing it, and Submit to Customs files it for real.

For Japan AFR there is no choice to make: whether your filings go straight to NACCS or are held for review is arranged on GeTS's side per company, and the wizard simply tells you which applies to you.

The filing-mode toggle — a draft stays in your own TradeWeb portal

Step 4 — Submit, and what comes back

Submitting hands the declaration to the customs authority and turns the card into a record. Most authorities answer asynchronously — a few seconds to a few hours — and the status updates itself as the answer arrives. You do not have to sit and wait, and you do not have to keep pressing refresh.

A submitted declaration — its reference, its status, and a way to re-check

What each status means

Notice the two "safe" statuses. Neither is an error and neither is a verdict — they mean the declaration is sitting safely where you put it, waiting for you. The record offers you the promotion (Submit to Customs →), not a correction, because there is nothing to correct.

When a filing is rejected

The rejection is decoded for you. Customs authorities answer in their own codes and, in some cases, in free text with no code at all — so each rejection is shown with:

• what it actually means, in plain English

• which field to fix, linked back to the form

• whose problem it is — yours to correct and re-file, or something that has to be raised with the authority, or the service provider's own fault, in which case editing your filing is the wrong move

That last distinction matters. Some rejections cannot be fixed in the declaration at all, and the instinct to start editing wastes an afternoon.

A rejection decoded into plain English, with the field to fix under each code

Filing again

You cannot accidentally file the same thing twice. While a declaration is queued, awaiting a response, or accepted, a second submission for that same house bill, country and environment is refused, and the record you already have is named in the refusal. The write actions disappear from a filed record too — you cannot half-submit over the top of one.

Anything in a correctable state — rejected, failed, no-response, cancelled — re-files freely.

To deliberately replace an accepted filing, use Amend / cancel on the record. That re-opens the declaration and marks the old one superseded, so the history stays intact and it is always clear which filing is the live one.

Filing several house bills at once

On the master tab you can select several house bills and submit them together. House bills that already have a filing are skipped rather than duplicated, and each skip is named on the results screen so you know exactly what went and what did not.

The master view — every house bill's filing status side by side

Where a value is the same across every house bill — the filer's own identity, the vessel, the master bill — it is entered once and carried across, so a ten-house consolidation does not mean typing the same declaring agent ten times.

Where we file

Filing cards for a Singapore-to-UAE shipment, with the reveal showing every country Fr8Labs integrates with

Each country has its own page with its declaration types, what you need to have ready, and how that authority answers:

Australia — ABF Customs

Enabled Australian companies use the ABF Customs tab on shipment details. This is a separate entry point from the Customs V2 flow above. Availability in ABF Customs does not establish availability of an Australian filing card in Customs V2.

The ABF integration supports Export Declaration (EXD), Sea Cargo Report (SEACR), Air Cargo Report (AIRCR), and Import Declaration (IMD) for the applicable shipment flows. Import cargo can also use UBMREQ, referencing a previously lodged Air or Sea Cargo Report.

To inspect an existing filing, open ABF Customs. Click the customs status badge to view its chronology, including the date, status and description of updates such as Held or Clear. For an accepted submission, Download PDF in the ABF document panel provides a summary.

Company enablement and the SUBMIT_ABF permission are prerequisites for filing. Ask Fr8Labs to confirm your company's setup; do not use database changes as an operator setup step.

Indonesia is filed from a different tab. Indonesian declarations go through BorderOne from the Customs tab, not the Customs V2 tab described here. If your company files in Indonesia and somewhere else, you will see both tabs on a shipment — see Indonesia — BorderOne.

Switching a country on

Every country needs your company registered with that authority or its service provider, and needs those credentials configured on our side. That is a short setup we do with you, not something you switch on yourself — and it is deliberate, because filing under the wrong registration is a real problem with a real customs authority.

Get in touch and tell us where you need to file.

Video Walkthrough

Documentation owner: Fr8Labs Customer Success. Text reviewed: 21 September 2026. ABF coverage is based on shipped features; tenant enablement remains company-specific.