ICEGATE
My CHA will not give me the shipping bill. How do I get it?
It was filed under your IEC, so Customs holds the record, not your broker. Where it already exists, how to reach it without them, and how to tell a stall from an unfiled EGM.
By Aaryan Kakani · · 11 min read
Why does my broker have the shipping bill and I do not?
Because of how the filing happens, not because of who owns the record. The customs broker files the shipping bill electronically on ICEGATE on your behalf, under your Importer-Exporter Code. The acknowledgement, the assessment and the Let Export Order all land back in the session the broker is logged into. If you never registered on ICEGATE yourself, every one of those events happened somewhere you cannot see, and the only copy you ever had was the one the broker chose to email you.
This is a visibility gap, and it is worth being precise about what it is and is not. The broker is not a custodian standing between you and a government record. The filing was made in your name, and the copy of record is the one Customs holds, not the one in your broker's outbox. That distinction is the whole of this page: it moves the problem from "how do I make them send it" to "which system do I go to instead", and the second question has answers that do not depend on anyone returning your call.
Do I need the document, or just the number?
Answer this before you spend a fortnight on the wrong retrieval. Most of what an exporter needs a shipping bill for consumes three identifiers (the shipping bill number, the port code and the date) rather than a rendered copy of the document. A bank tracing an entry, a scheme claim being matched, an eBRC being mapped: these run on the identifiers. A buyer's document pack, a dispute file or an auditor's request is where a copy is genuinely wanted.
| What you are trying to do | What it actually needs |
|---|---|
| Answer a bank query on an open EDPMS entry | The identifiers. The bank is matching its own entry, not reading your copy. |
| Map an eBRC to the shipment | The identifiers, and the shipping bill must have reached DGFT. See section 8. |
| Check whether a scheme benefit has been scrolled | The identifiers, and the Export General Manifest must be filed. See section 5. |
| Send a document pack to a buyer | A copy. The identifiers will not satisfy this. |
| Respond to an audit or a dispute file | A copy, and usually the surrounding pack rather than the shipping bill alone. |
The practical consequence is that a broker who has gone quiet blocks far less than it feels like. If your live problem is a bank query or a stuck entry, the identifiers are recoverable from parties who have no interest in the dispute, and section 3 is where to get them.
Where does the shipping bill already exist outside my broker?
In at least three places, and the useful question is which one to approach for what. Each row below states what that party holds, what you can realistically get from it, and what you need to have in hand before you ask. Because the last column is what decides the order you work in.
| Party | What it holds | What you need first |
|---|---|---|
| ICEGATE. Public tracking | Current status of the consignment: Filed, Under Assessment, Let Export Order issued, or EGM filed. | The shipping bill number and the port code. No login. |
| ICEGATE. Registered under your IEC | Standing in the portal as the exporter rather than through your broker's session. What is exposed to a registered user is set out in the ICEGATE guide. | Registration in your own name. The one step that is worth doing today whatever else you do. |
| Your AD bank. EDPMS | The entry against your IEC, carrying the shipping bill number, port code, date and value. | Your IEC and an approximate date or value. The trade desk reads it off the entry. |
| DGFT. By transmission | Shipping bills transmitted from Customs against your IEC, which is what scheme claims and eBRC mapping run on. | Your DGFT digital credentials. Note that a bill can exist at Customs and not here. Section 8. |
| Your courier or aggregator | For e-commerce consignments it is the party that filed the CSB-V or the shipping bill, so it holds the number against your consignment. | The order or consignment reference. Ask for the number directly rather than assuming the portal displays it. |
What if I do not even know the shipping bill number?
This is the common case, and it is the reason the public tracking route disappoints people: it is a lookup, and a lookup needs something to look up. You recover an identifier by going to a party that indexes your shipments by something you still hold. Your IEC, an order reference, a payment.
- Your AD bank, from the payment. If the money arrived, there is an entry, and the entry carries the shipping bill it was matched against. Ask the trade or EDPMS desk to read you the shipping bill number, port code and date on the entry rather than asking them for a document.
- Your courier or aggregator, from the order. For e-commerce volumes this is often the shortest hop, because it is the party that made the filing against a consignment reference you still have. Ask it for the number; whether its portal shows you directly varies by provider.
- ICEGATE, from your IEC. Registering in your own name is the route that does not depend on anyone else having indexed your shipment helpfully. It is slower to start and it is the only one that keeps working next quarter.
- DGFT, from your IEC. Useful where the reason you want the number is a scheme claim, because it also tells you whether the bill reached DGFT at all.
Note what is not on that list: a request to the broker. Not because it cannot work, but because if it were working you would not be reading this, and every route above proceeds in parallel with whatever is happening on that front.
Is "it is not ready yet" true, or a stall?
It can be either, and there is a specific fact that makes the honest version honest. Nothing downstream of an export moves until the carrier files the Export General Manifest : drawback, RoDTEP and the EDPMS update all wait on that EGM. So there is a real window in which the goods have gone, the broker has done their job, and the thing a downstream process is asking for genuinely does not exist yet. And the party holding it up is the carrier, not your broker.
You do not have to take a view on anyone's good faith to resolve this. Check the status yourself. ICEGATE's public tracking returns the stage the consignment has reached (Filed, Under Assessment, Let Export Order issued, or EGM filed) and that single reading separates the two explanations:
| What the status shows | What it means for the request |
|---|---|
| Let Export Order issued, no EGM | The delay is real and it is with the carrier. Chase the EGM through the line or the forwarder, not the document through the broker. |
| EGM filed | The "not ready" explanation has expired. You are being managed rather than informed, and section 6 is how to write the next message. |
| Under assessment, or a query raised | Something in the filing needs answering. This one does need the broker, or a replacement broker, because it is live work rather than a document hand-over. |
| No record for the number | Check the port code before concluding anything. A wrong port code returns nothing in exactly the way a missing filing does. |
How do I ask the broker so the request actually works?
Keep asking in parallel with the routes above, and write the request so it is cheap to answer. A broker who has gone quiet is usually not conducting a strategy; they are triaging an inbox, and a vague request costs them more to service than a precise one.
- Name the consignment, not the relationship. Give the invoice number, the date, the port and the buyer. A message that opens with a grievance and never identifies the shipment cannot be actioned even by someone willing to help.
- Ask for the identifiers first. Request the shipping bill number, port code and date as a line of text. That is a reply someone can type from a phone, and per section 2 it may be all you needed.
- Ask in writing, on one thread. Not for confrontation. So that the request has a date on it if you later need to show you asked, and so the answer does not arrive on a call nobody can find afterwards.
- Say what it is for and by when. "My bank has an open entry and has asked for this by the end of the month" moves a request up a queue in a way that "please send urgently" does not.
- Do not make the first message a threat. It converts an administrative request into a dispute, and disputes are slower than the alternative routes you are already running.
What if they are holding it against an unpaid invoice?
Then you have two disputes, and the single most useful thing you can do is stop treating them as one. They resolve on different tracks, at different speeds, with different consequences for being slow.
| The money question | The record question |
|---|---|
| Contractual, between you and the broker. Resolved on the merits of the engagement, and it can take as long as it takes. | Runs through ICEGATE, your AD bank and the courier. Parties with no stake in the invoice and no ability to gate it. |
| Nothing compliance-related turns on settling it this week. | A realisation deadline, a scheme window or an EDPMS entry may very much turn on this week. |
Pay what is genuinely owed. Where the charge itself is the dispute, the leverage you are looking for is not the document (you can get that elsewhere) but the ordinary commercial one, and it works better once the broker can see that withholding the copy has stopped being effective.
Is this an access problem or a transmission problem?
These look identical from where the exporter stands (in both cases something you are entitled to is not in front of you) and they are fixed in completely different places. Tell them apart early, because months get lost chasing a person for a problem between two government systems.
| Symptom | Which problem | Where it is fixed |
|---|---|---|
| You cannot see or obtain a copy, but the consignment tracks fine | Access | The routes in section 3. Nothing is wrong with the filing. |
| Customs shows the bill; DGFT does not have it | Transmission | A re-transmission request. No person is withholding anything. |
| The bank cannot close the entry although you hold the document | Neither | An EDPMS matching problem. Holding a copy was never what closed it. |
| A detail on the filing is wrong | Neither | An amendment, which is live work rather than a hand-over. |
The tell is whether the consignment tracks. If ICEGATE knows about it and someone downstream does not, you are in row two or row three and no amount of pressure on the broker will move it.
How do I stop the next shipment turning into this one?
Everything above recovers one document. The items below change whether you are ever in this position again, and none of them needs your current broker's cooperation.
- Register on ICEGATE under your own IEC. The single highest-value item on this page. It converts every future instance of this problem from a negotiation into a lookup.
- Keep your own register of identifiers, per shipment. Shipping bill number, port code, date, invoice and buyer, in one place you control. Four fields, captured at the time, remove most of the pain in sections 3 and 4.
- Put the hand-over in the engagement, not in the goodwill. Agree at the outset that the identifiers and a copy come back to you within a set number of days of the Let Export Order. A broker who will not agree to that in writing has told you something useful.
- Reconcile against your bank monthly, not annually. An entry checked while the shipment is recent is an administrative task. The same entry found open two years later is the subject of an entirely different guide.
Which figures does this guide not state, and where are they?
This page states no fee, turnaround, retention period or deadline, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. The questions it raises that do have numbers attached are answered on the pages that carry the citation for them:
| The figure this page does not state | Where it is stated, with its source |
|---|---|
| How long you have to realise the proceeds | When the realisation clock starts. And it depends on your date of shipment, because the period has changed more than once. |
| How long a DGFT re-transmission takes | The re-transmission guide , with the six failure responses. |
| What a bank charges on export bill handling | The FEDAI rules and bank charges guide . |
| What registration on ICEGATE requires, step by step | The ICEGATE guide . This page states the route, not the screens. |
Two further things this page deliberately does not do. It does not state what a customs broker's licensing obligations require them to hand over, because that is a regulatory claim and it is not sourced here. The routes above are what make the answer matter less. And it does not describe ICEGATE's menu paths, because a click path that has moved is worse than no click path at all.
Questions exporters ask when the broker goes quiet
Can my CHA legally refuse to give me the shipping bill?
The question is worth re-framing, because it assumes the broker is the gatekeeper and they are not. The shipping bill was filed electronically under your own Importer-Exporter Code, and the record sits with Customs on ICEGATE. A broker who stops responding has withheld their copy and their cooperation; they have not withheld the record. That is why the productive first move is to register on ICEGATE under your own IEC rather than to argue about entitlement. Whether the broker also owes you the document under your engagement with them is a contractual matter between you and them, and it is a slower route to the same place.
I do not even know my shipping bill number. Where do I start?
With whoever else already has it. For an e-commerce consignment the courier or aggregator is the party that filed the CSB-V or the shipping bill, so it holds the number and can quote it against your consignment reference. Ask it directly rather than assuming its portal will show you. Your AD bank holds it too: the entry against your IEC is what sits in EDPMS, and the trade desk can read the shipping bill number, port code and date off it. Registering on ICEGATE in your own name is the route that ends the dependency, because you are then in the portal as the exporter rather than depending on the session your broker logs into.
Can I track a shipping bill on ICEGATE without an account?
Yes, if you already have the two identifiers. This site's ICEGATE guide records that the public tracking feature on the ICEGATE homepage takes a shipping bill number and a port code without a login, and returns the current status. Filed, Under Assessment, Let Export Order issued, or EGM filed. That is enough to establish where the consignment actually stands, which is often the real question behind the request. It is a status view rather than a substitute for registering, and if you do not hold the number and port code it cannot help you.
The broker says the shipping bill is not ready yet. Is that a stall?
Sometimes it is accurate. Nothing downstream of an export moves until the carrier files the Export General Manifest, and drawback, RoDTEP and the EDPMS update all wait on that EGM. So there is a real window in which the consignment has shipped and the record a downstream process wants is genuinely not complete. The way to tell a stall from a fact is to check the status yourself rather than to accept or reject the explanation. If the status shows the EGM is filed and your broker still says it is not ready, you are being managed rather than informed.
My broker is withholding the document until I pay their bill. What now?
Separate the two disputes, because they resolve on different tracks and at different speeds. The money question is contractual and can take as long as it takes. The record question does not have to wait on it, because the routes that do not run through the broker (your ICEGATE registration under your own IEC, your AD bank's EDPMS view, the courier) are not theirs to gate. Settle the invoice on its own merits if it is owed. Do not let an unpaid invoice decide whether you meet a realisation deadline, because the deadline does not pause for a commercial dispute.
The shipping bill exists at Customs but DGFT cannot see it. Is that the same problem?
No, and it is worth telling apart early because the fix is different. A broker who will not respond is an access problem and is solved by going to a party who is not them. A shipping bill that Customs holds but DGFT never received is a transmission problem between two government systems, and it is solved by a re-transmission request rather than by chasing any person. If your scheme claim or eBRC is what is blocked rather than your sight of the document, you are probably in the second case.
What should I read next?
- The ICEGATE guide. Registration, filing, status tracking and EGM
- When Customs has the shipping bill and DGFT does not. Re-transmission
- Why a shipping bill will not close. The causes in the order they occur
- Amending a shipping bill. When the filing itself is wrong
- Choosing a customs broker. What to check before you appoint the next one
Update history
- First published.