RBI
My bank wants a FIRC for a shipment from years ago. What now?
An old export bill closes on the bank's Inward Remittance Message, not on a certificate handed to you. What can still be retrieved, what to send instead, and the write-off route.
By Aaryan Kakani · · 12 min read
Why is this coming up years after the shipment?
Because nothing in the system forces the question earlier. The goods left, the money came, the invoice was marked paid in your accounts, and none of those events closes the entry against the shipping bill in EDPMS. The entry sits open silently. What eventually surfaces it is one of a small number of triggers, and knowing which one you are looking at tells you who has to act.
| What surfaced it | What the asker actually wants | Who can resolve it |
|---|---|---|
| Your AD bank's periodic EDPMS review of open entries | An IRM matched to the shipping bill in EDPMS so the entry can be closed | The bank, from its own records. You supply the identifiers |
| A DGFT scheme claim, or a scrip application that needs the bill realised | An eBRC against the shipping bill | You, self-certified. But only once the bank has reported the IRM |
| A statutory audit, a due diligence exercise, or a lender | Evidence that a named foreign credit reached you against a named invoice | You, from bank advices and statements. No EDPMS action needed |
| A caution-listing notice, or a bank declining to handle a new shipment | The open entries cleared, or a formal route opened for the ones that cannot be | The bank, on your written application. And it is time-critical |
| A GST refund or departmental query on an old export | Proof of receipt of foreign exchange under that regime's own evidence rules | You. And the accepted evidence differs between goods and services |
Only two of those five rows are actually about closing an EDPMS entry. The other three want evidence, and evidence is a much easier thing to produce than a reissued certificate. Working out which row you are in is thirty seconds of reading the request, and it decides whether you spend the next month at your bank's trade desk or ten minutes in your own statements.
Is the FIRC actually what this bill is waiting for?
Usually not, and this is the single most expensive misreading in this area. An EDPMS entry closes when your Authorised Dealer bank matches an Inward Remittance Message to the shipping bill. The IRM is the bank's own record of a foreign credit, created by the bank and reported by the bank. A certificate issued to you is a copy of evidence; it is not the record, and handing it back to the bank does not create one.
So before you spend a month on retrieval, establish which of these three states the bill is actually in. Each has a different next step and only one of them is a document problem at all.
| State | How you can tell | The next step |
|---|---|---|
| The entry is already closed and the extract is stale | Ask for a fresh EDPMS extract dated today rather than the one attached to the email | Nothing. Reply with the fresh extract and close the thread. This costs thirty seconds and it precedes everything else |
| The credit arrived but no IRM was created, or it went against the wrong bill | The money is visible in your account statement for the period; the EDPMS entry is open with no matched receipt | A tracing request to the bank with the credit date, amount and reference. The bank acts, not you |
| The bill never reached EDPMS from customs at all | The bank cannot see the shipping bill, not merely the receipt against it | A customs-side problem, not a banking one. No certificate of any kind will help |
| The money genuinely did not arrive, or arrived short | No credit in the statement for the period, or a credit materially below the bill value | A reduction, small-value closure or write-off route. See section 6 |
If you are unsure which of the three live states you are in, the guide to why a shipping bill will not close walks the causes in the order they actually occur, and separates the customs half of the problem from the banking half. The two halves share no parties, so the separation is worth making before you write to anyone.
What can still be retrieved, and from whom?
Retrieval has two tiers, and exporters conclude a document is gone when only the first tier has closed. Self-service is the portal tab or download button, and it exposes a finite recent window. Manual retrieval is a request to a human against an archived record, and it is slower, often priced, and usually still possible. The second tier is where old bills live.
| Where the money came through | Self-service tier | Manual tier, once that closes |
|---|---|---|
| A direct wire to your AD bank account | The bank's trade portal, where it offers one. Across the bank portals researched for this site, none documents a self-serve certificate download | A written request to the trade services desk for a duplicate advice or certificate, normally priced in the bank's published schedule of charges |
| A payment platform or marketplace settlement | The platform's own report or document section, covering a recent rolling window only | The platform's custom or bulk retrieval process. Where a platform documents this route it is normally paid and routed through the platform's own partner bank rather than yours |
| A credit you can see but cannot identify | Your own account statement for the period, which you can always pull | A tracing request quoting the statement line, so the bank can locate the underlying message |
| The bank has changed, merged or closed the branch | Nothing. Portal access usually goes with the relationship | The successor entity's trade services desk, then its nodal officer. Ask who now holds the records for the predecessor branch before assuming they are gone |
For which banks and which platforms expose what, and the published charges where a bank publishes them, see the FIRA download guide and the provider-by-provider comparison . This page does not restate those figures; see section 8.
What do I send when the named document cannot be produced?
Establish what the asker is trying to prove, then send the thing that proves it, and say in writing which named document it stands in place of. Most requests for a FIRC on an old bill are really requests to prove that a specific foreign payment reached you against a specific shipping bill. Several documents establish that, and the ones you already hold are usually enough.
- Your bank account statement for the period, showing the credit with its value date, amount and the reference it landed under. This is the primary evidence that the money reached India, and you can pull it yourself without asking anyone.
- The bank's inward remittance advice or credit advice, which is normally still issuable even where the certificate is not. Ask for the advice by that name rather than asking for a FIRC and being told no.
- The platform's Foreign Inward Remittance Advice for the settlement batch, where the money came through a gateway or marketplace. Pair it with the settlement report that breaks the batch down to your individual orders, or the advice will not tie to the bill.
- The EDPMS position itself, as an extract from your AD bank. Where the entry is closed, this is stronger than any certificate: it is the regulatory record rather than evidence about it.
- The eBRC, where one exists, which states that the shipping bill was realised and for how much. For a DGFT scheme claim this is the document, and nothing else substitutes for it.
- A dated covering letter tying the pieces together, naming the shipping bill, the invoice, the credit and which named document each attachment stands in place of. This is what turns a bundle of PDFs into an answer.
How do I write the request so the bank can act on it?
An old-bill request fails on identifiers more often than on willingness. The trade desk is searching archived records, and a request that says "please issue a FIRC for our 2022 export" cannot be actioned by anybody. Give the fields that let somebody find the record, and ask for the outcome rather than the stationery.
Put these in the request
- Shipping bill number, port code and date. The key the EDPMS entry is held under
- Invoice number, date and value, with the currency stated
- Credit date, amount and the reference it landed under, copied from your statement line
- The account the credit was posted to, and the branch. Which may not be your current one
- The remitter name as it appears on the credit, which for gateway receipts is the platform or its partner bank, not your buyer
- What you are asking for, in outcome terms. That the IRM be traced and matched to the shipping bill, or that a duplicate advice be issued, or both
- A request for written confirmation of the action taken. So the next sweep does not start the thread again
Escalate by published route rather than by person: the trade services desk first, then the branch head or the bank's nodal officer, then the grievance channel. Relationship managers change desks, and an escalation addressed to a person who has moved is an escalation that never happened. If the open entry is approaching or past its realisation deadline, say so in the first line. The letter template for an overdue realisation is written for exactly that case and carries the regime table you need to compute the deadline correctly.
What if the money never fully arrived?
Then the chase was always going to fail, and continuing it is how bills stay open for years. No certificate can evidence a credit that did not happen. What closes a bill in this state is a procedure, run through your AD bank, that names the shortfall and disposes of it. Which procedure depends on why the money is missing.
| Why the money is short | The route | Where it is set out |
|---|---|---|
| Platform and gateway fees were deducted before settlement | Not a shortfall at all in most cases, but it must be shown as a deduction rather than left as a gap | Short utilisation on digital goods |
| The buyer paid less after a quality claim or a negotiated reduction | A reduction in the export invoice value, on a reasoned request to the AD bank | Reducing an export invoice value |
| The bill is small and the residue is not worth pursuing | The simplified small-value closure route, on a declaration rather than a full document set | Small-value EDPMS closure |
| The buyer never paid and is not going to | A write-off of the unrealised bill, with the evidence of pursuit the bank will expect | Writing off an unrealised export bill |
The distinction that matters most on an old bill is the first row against the rest. A fee deduction is not a non-realisation, and treating it as one sends an exporter into a write-off application they never needed. Establish the arithmetic (gross order value, platform fees, refunds, net settlement) before you choose a route, because the route you choose is very hard to change once the bank has started processing it.
How do I stop the next bill turning into this one?
Everything on this page is expensive because it is retrospective. The same work done at the time of the settlement costs minutes. Four habits remove almost the whole problem class, and none of them needs anybody's permission.
- Download the advice in the week the settlement lands, not at year end. The self-service window is the cheapest retrieval tier and it is the one that expires. A file per week, named for the settlement, removes the entire manual-retrieval path from your future.
- Ask your bank for the open-entry EDPMS extract on a schedule, rather than waiting to be told. The list is short when it is current and unmanageable when it is four years deep, and the bank can produce it at any time.
- Keep the payout-to-shipping-bill allocation at the time you reconcile, including the fee lines. Rebuilding which orders sat inside a settlement three years later is the single most time-consuming part of an old-bill response.
- Generate the eBRC once the IRM appears, rather than at scheme-claim time. The eBRC carries a value, and discovering that the value is lower than the shipping bill FOB at the moment you file a claim is a worse time to find out.
If your receipts come through a payment platform, the weekly download habit is the one that pays for itself fastest. the weekly FIRA routine sets out why the retrieval window and the realisation clock tend to expire within weeks of each other, which is what turns a document task into an old-bill problem.
Which figures does this guide not state, and where are they?
This page deliberately states no charge, retention period, turnaround or deadline. Every one of those varies by bank, by platform or by the date you shipped, and a stated figure that is wrong for your case is worse than a routing instruction that is right. Four things it declines to state:
- What each bank and platform charges to reissue an advice or certificate, and how long it takes. Published schedules differ and are revised. Bank by bank and platform by platform in the FIRA download guide and the guide to FEDAI rules and bank charges .
- How far back a bank or a platform must keep the record. This page says only that the free download window closing is not the same as the record being gone, which is the part that changes what you do. The retention obligation itself is not stated here, because it is not sourced to a primary document on this page.
- The realisation period your old bill is running against. It depends on your date of shipment and it has changed more than once. See when the realisation clock actually starts and the regime table in the overdue-realisation letter guide .
- The date and instrument that ended physical FIRCs for export receipts. Widely reported, not sourced to a primary document here, and so not stated. This page says only that banks generally no longer issue one. Which is the part that changes what you ask for.
Questions exporters ask about old bills and old FIRCs
My bank is asking me for a FIRC on a shipment it received the money for itself. Why?
Because the person asking is usually not the person who received it. The credit was posted by the bank's inward remittance or nostro team; the request is coming from the trade or EDPMS desk, which is looking at an open entry against a shipping bill and cannot see a matched Inward Remittance Message against it. They are asking you for a document because that is the request their process makes, not because a document is what closes the entry. The productive reply names the shipping bill, the date and amount of the credit and the reference under which it landed, and asks them to trace the IRM rather than to issue you a certificate.
Can my bank refuse to give me a FIRC for an old remittance?
It can decline to issue one, and that is not the same as refusing to help you. Banks generally no longer issue the physical Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate for ordinary export receipts at all, whatever the age of the transaction, so an old bill is not a special case of a document you could otherwise have had. What a bank will normally still produce is an advice or a statement extract evidencing the credit. Ask for what evidences the credit rather than for the named certificate, and ask in writing so the request is on record if you later need to escalate.
The money came through a payment platform, not my bank. Who do I ask?
Both, in that order, and for two different things. The platform issues the Foreign Inward Remittance Advice covering the settlement batch, and its self-service download window is finite. Once it closes you are into the platform's paid or manual retrieval route. Your AD bank is the party that reported the Inward Remittance Message into EDPMS, and only the bank can correct or create that. An advice from the platform proves the money moved; the bank's IRM is what closes the shipping bill. Chasing only the platform leaves the entry open.
The shipping bill is old. Has the deadline already passed, and does that change what I should do?
It changes the framing, not the first step. An overdue bill is still closed by the same mechanics as a current one, and you still start by establishing whether the entry is open at the bank or open at customs. What being overdue adds is exposure: an entry left open past its realisation period is what puts an exporter in front of the caution-listing process, and the period itself is not a single number because it has changed more than once. Establish the position first, then compute the deadline against the regime your date of shipment actually falls under.
Can I just file the eBRC myself and be done with it?
Only if the bank has already reported the Inward Remittance Message. The eBRC is self-certified by the exporter on the DGFT portal under DGFT Trade Notice 33/2023-24, by mapping bank-reported IRMs to shipping bills. So the exporter does the certifying, but the bank supplies the raw material. If no IRM exists against the bill, there is nothing to map and the portal will not let you generate anything. This is why an old bill so often looks like a document problem and is really an upstream reporting gap.
What if the money genuinely never arrived in full?
Then a certificate was never going to close the bill, and you are in a different procedure. Short realisation, a fee deduction that was never going to be remitted, and outright non-payment each have their own route: a reduction in the invoice value, a small-value closure route, or a write-off. All of them run through your AD bank and all of them need the shortfall named and evidenced rather than left as an unexplained gap. Continuing to chase a FIRC for money that did not come is the most common way an old bill stays open for years.
What should I read next?
- FIRC, FIRA or eBRC. Which one the party asking actually needs
- Why a shipping bill will not close. The causes in the order they occur
- How to download a FIRA. Bank by bank and platform by platform, with charges
- Writing off an unrealised export bill. When no document will close it
- Getting off the caution list. Where unanswered old entries end up
Update history
- First published.