What is the US Importer Security Filing (ISF 10+2)?

CBP calls the rule Importer Security Filing and Additional Carrier Requirements. It took effect on 26 January 2009 and applies to import cargo arriving to the United States by vessel. Cargo arriving by air, road or rail is outside it.

It is called 10+2 because of how the information splits. Ten data elements come from the importer side. Two come from the carrier: a vessel stow plan, required for arriving vessels with containers, and container status messages, required where the carrier has a system for collecting them.

There are two filings, not one. US-bound cargo, which CBP says includes foreign trade zone cargo and immediate transportation moves, needs an ISF-10. Transit cargo needs an ISF-5 instead: foreign cargo remaining on board, immediate exportation and transportation and exportation shipments each carry five elements.

Some cargo needs neither. CBP says no filing is required for bulk cargo, and empty containers are exempt. Break bulk that is exempt from the 24-hour manifest rule still needs a filing, but 24 hours before arrival rather than before loading.

CBP puts one party on the hook and calls that party the ISF Importer. Its definition, at 19 CFR 149.1, is the party causing goods to arrive within the limits of a port in the United States by vessel.

For ordinary import cargo, CBP says that will be the goods’ owner, purchaser, consignee, or agent such as a licensed customs broker. For in-bond exportation shipments and goods going to a foreign trade zone, it may also be the party filing that documentation. For foreign cargo remaining on board it is the carrier or the NVOCC, a definition CBP widened in its 2018 rule.

A forwarder can be the filer. CBP is explicit about it. A filing agent does not have to be a customs broker except in the case of a unified entry filing, and a foreign freight forwarder can also be a filing agent. The filer need not be located in the United States, again unless the filing is a unified entry. No new or special power of attorney is needed, and CBP decides whether one is sufficient case by case.

What does not move is the responsibility. CBP’s wording is that the ISF Importer is responsible for the timely, accurate, and complete filing. Where a carrier issues the wrong bill of lading number and nobody corrects it, the claim still reaches the ISF Importer.

Filings reach CBP through the Automated Broker Interface or ACE Manifest. There is no importer web portal any more, and a filer needs either a SCAC or an ABI filer code.

CBP prints a definition and a regulation cite for each element. The table is the whole 10+2 in one place.

The ISF-5 is a different list rather than a shorter version of the same one. It carries booking party, foreign port of unlading, place of delivery, ship-to party and the commodity HTSUS number.

Two of the ten cause most of the work. Container stuffing location is the physical place the goods went into the container, and the consolidator is the party who stuffed it or arranged the stuffing. CBP’s own FAQ carries a question from a filer asking how to explain those two to their foreign shippers. That question is the job in one line.

The headline deadline is 24 hours before loading. CBP requires eight of the ten elements no later than 24 hours before the cargo is laden aboard a US-bound vessel. The other two, container stuffing location and consolidator, are due as early as possible but no later than 24 hours before the ship arrives at a US port.

Loading means the vessel that is going to the United States. Where cargo moves on a feeder first, CBP measures from lading aboard the US-bound vessel, not the feeder.

CBP measures timeliness as the vessel departure date minus 24 hours, in the local time zone of the load port. A filing accepted less than 24 hours before departure is late. One that is later replaced keeps its original file date.

A second deadline catches operations teams. The filing has to match to the bill of lading no later than 24 hours before arrival at the first US port. One that never matches is treated as inaccurate, on the basis of a wrong bill number, even though it went in on time.

Filing early is allowed, and CBP encourages it. It leaves room to amend and time to put a bond in place.

CBP built the gap into the filing. Every ISF-10 carries an action reason code that tells CBP what kind of filing it is.

• CT, compliant transaction. All data is present, from what CBP calls “the best information available at the time of the filing”, and no flexibility applies. CT also finalises an FR, FT or FX filing.
• FR, flexible range. A range of data has been given for the manufacturer, the ship-to party, the country of origin or the commodity HTSUS number.
• FT, flexible timing. The consolidator name and address, or the stuffing location, has not been given yet.
• FX. Both of the above on the same filing.

Two rules sit underneath that. Where FR, FT or FX is used, CBP expects an update, due as soon as more accurate information is known and in any event no later than 24 hours before arrival. And if better information never arrives, the filing still has to be closed out with a CT code.

Individual elements have their own allowances. If the ship-to party is not known, CBP will take the facility where the goods will be unladen, a FIRMS code for a warehouse or terminal, or an inland distribution centre.

CBP’s rule is that the filing must be amended if there is a change, or if more accurate information becomes available, before the goods enter the limits of the port of first arrival in the United States. For a flexible filing the practical deadline is earlier, at 24 hours before arrival.

Generally the requirement to update ends when the vessel calls at the US port of arrival. CBP does not block later updates. It simply stops requiring them.

Changing filer part way through is not a swap. To update a filing its agent submitted, the ISF Importer has to ask a CBP Client Representative to cancel the original before a new one goes in. Where the ISF Importer itself changes before the deadline, responsibility can move, but there is no systematic way to record that it moved.

One filing can cover several bills of lading, as long as they belong to the same shipment, ISF Importer, vessel and voyage.

CBP enforces this through liquidated damages, under mitigation guidelines it published in the Customs Bulletin on 17 July 2009. The ISF Importer is liable for:

• a failure to file
• a late filing, at $5,000 per late filing
• an inaccurate filing, at $5,000 per inaccurate filing
• an inaccurate update, at $5,000 for the first inaccurate update
• a failure to withdraw

Claims are not automatic. CBP says one may be cancelled in full where it was issued in error or at no fault of the ISF Importer.

Money is not the only consequence. Where no filing exists, CBP withholds release until one is provided, and its answer to a shipment that has already arrived without one is to file it anyway. Late filings may mean more intensive examination, because CBP has not had time to target in advance.

The record you have to produce runs longer than most teams expect. CBP says it generally reviews the previous six months for timeliness, but can go back six years, on the statute of limitations under the ISF bond.

You can see your own position without waiting for a claim. CBP publishes, in ACE Reports, on demand, for brokers, carriers, importers and sureties:

• an ISF Late Report;
• an ISF Progress Report; and
• an ISF History Report.

Read back through the ten elements and count how many are decisions. Almost none. They are answers other people have to give you. The factory that made the goods. The address the container was stuffed at. The party that arranged it. The tariff number.

The filing is a transmission that takes a minute. The chase is the job, and the chase is an email problem. It starts on the booking, runs across working days in other countries, and is usually held together by one coordinator remembering who has not replied.

FreighAI does not file the ISF or any other declaration. It works on the chase around it. Spots what is missing in an enquiry and drafts the email asking for it. Follow-ups, chasers and reminders happen on their own, on the same conversation.

The elements are still checked by the person accountable for them, and the filing still goes out through your broker or your own connection. Two questions worth putting to any supplier who says it helps with this:

• 01Show us a booking where two of the ten elements are missing. What does the system send, who does it go to, and when does it chase again?
• 02When the shipper answers four days later, who is told, and what does the person still have to retype?

Take one shipment that went wrong and one that went normally, and put the documents beside the deadlines:

• the booking confirmation and the date it arrived;
• the departure date and the load port’s time zone;
• when each element was answered, and by whom;
• the acceptance message and the bill match message;
• every version of the filing and the line that changed;
• the emails asking for an element, and how often they went; and
• any claim, exam notice or delay that followed.

If one element took four days to arrive, the useful question is not who was slow. It is what asked for it, when the chaser went out, and what happened in between.