Almost every consignment we see stuck at a port is stuck for one of seven reasons. All seven are visible in the paperwork days before the vessel arrives.
Ports and customs are rarely the reason cargo sits. Documentation is. Here are the seven failures we see most, in rough order of how much time each one costs.
1. Invoice and packing list that disagree
The invoice says 500 units. The packing list says 480 across 12 cartons. Customs sees a discrepancy and raises a query, and you have lost two days minimum.
Fix: Reconcile the two documents line by line the day your supplier sends them. Quantities, descriptions, carton counts and gross/net weights must agree.
2. Product descriptions that describe nothing
"Machine parts." "Electronic goods." "Textile items." A description this vague forces the assessing officer to either guess or ask, and they will ask.
Fix: Describe what the thing is, what it is made of and what it does. "Stainless steel ball bearings, 6204-2RS, for industrial gearboxes" gives the officer everything needed to confirm your classification without a query.
3. An HS code nobody verified
Classification decides your duty rate, whether an anti-dumping duty applies, and which product approvals are triggered. A wrong code is not a clerical error — it is a misdeclaration, and it can carry a penalty on top of the reassessed duty.
Fix: Confirm the code before the goods ship. Where the classification is genuinely arguable, an advance ruling removes the ambiguity permanently.
4. A Certificate of Origin that arrives late
Preferential duty under a free trade agreement requires a valid Certificate of Origin at the time of assessment. If it arrives after, you pay full duty and then fight for a refund — a process that takes months, if it works at all.
Fix: Treat the CoO as a pre-shipment document. Confirm your supplier has applied for it before the container is loaded.
5. Product approvals treated as an afterthought
BIS certification, FSSAI import clearance, WPC approval, EPR registration, drug licences — these take weeks to obtain and cannot be arranged while cargo waits. A container held for a missing BIS certificate accrues demurrage and detention every single day.
Fix: Identify every approval that applies to your product at the purchase order stage. This is the single highest-value check in the whole process.
6. Valuation that invites a challenge
Declared values well below comparable imports get flagged. So do transactions between related parties without supporting documentation, and invoices that omit freight or insurance where the incoterm requires them to be included.
Fix: Ensure the declared value reflects the actual transaction value, correctly adjusted for the incoterm. Keep the purchase order, payment proof and contract available.
7. A digital signature that expired last week
The DSC linked to your ICEGATE account has a fixed validity. When it lapses, filing stops — and you discover it when you try to file.
Fix: Diarise the renewal a month ahead. Keep a second authorised signatory registered as a fallback.
What these mistakes cost
Demurrage begins once free time at the port ends — typically three to seven days. Detention on the container follows. Both accrue daily, both are charged at rates that escalate, and neither is negotiable after the fact.
A single missing certificate on a 40ft container can cost more in demurrage than the entire freight bill.
The pattern
Every item on this list is visible in the documentation before the vessel arrives. None of them require the cargo to be present to be caught. That is the whole argument for reviewing documents at the enquiry stage rather than the arrival stage.
We run this check on every consignment before it moves. If you want a second pair of eyes on a document set, send it across.
