International shipments already come with heavy logistical burdens to shoulder in-house. Even the smallest error or miscalculation on your end could cause your time-sensitive hardware shipment to be detained at the border—not to mention the penalties and added fines you could accrue as a result. This logistical burden isn’t one that many companies are equipped to take on. That’s why organizations prefer to work with international trade experts in supply chain.

Many companies, however, don’t have the resources or the need for a full-time internal customs broker to handle your international trade expertise in-house. But you shouldn’t have to engage a third-party customs brokerage; your IT lifecycle management partner should have the in-house customs expertise you need for a more accurate and efficient way to ensure the seamless (and properly taxed) shipment of your critical hardware. Here’s how in-house licensed customs expertise can help companies navigate the complexities of international shipments.

CentricsIT ships internationally for our clients’ maintenance endeavors every day. And we do this to support the global reach you’ve heard us reference when discussing the CentricsIT ITAD and TPM service offerings. However, our international trade expertise offers more than just the leveraging of secondary hardware markets.

A Licensed Customs Broker is licensed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after passing extensive examinations that cover:

Once licensed, this individual is a certified expert in overseeing the proper packaging, licensing, classification, tax and fee payments, and all import and export documentation necessary to get shipments across the intended borders to their destinations.

Licensed customs brokers make it easy to understand the relevant Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) needed for international shipments. These HTS codes are used by Customs to:

If you have the wrong HTS code filed, then you are likely to be flagged, detained, and charged penalties. With in-house international expertise, CentricsIT helps you avoid costly pitfalls.

Our in-house customs experts establish and maintain relationships with partners to expand our legal presence and to employ local distribution knowledge across the globe. The international network of registered import and export specialists—Importers of Record (IORs)— that CentricsIT has cultivated communicates directly with our CentricsIT logistics team to streamline our clients’ hardware shipments from all angles. We ensure accuracy and speed while mitigating complications from both sides of the border.

The CentricsIT in-house customs team boasts a thorough knowledge of international trade compliance. CentricsIT can file entries into the U.S. directly, determine duty rate classifications, and provide product certifications—all in-house and without unnecessary delay.

Once a client needs to ship equipment internationally, however, the CentricsIT in-house customs team works directly with the corresponding IOR partner for support. With in-country knowledge and experience behind them, each IOR partner compiles all that we need to know for successful exportation to the destination country. These reports include detailed shipping instructions and classification regulations, and they inform us of any international trade restrictions that need to be met. As needed, our IOR partners also obtain necessary shipping licenses for VAT compliance—all of which further provide legitimacy (and smooth the import process) for each country’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency.

Once compliance has been determined (and our IOR partner has vetted all pre-shipment documentation), the CentricsIT highly-trained warehouse team will securely package the internationally-bound hardware and prepare it for overseas transport. As CentricsIT has also established relationships with internationally-trusted carriers, we can also ensure chain-of-custody for each of our customers’ shipments, no matter the destination.

The experts at CentricsIT fully understand the critical, on-demand nature of IT maintenance, so we stock locally in advance of any critical failures. For other international logistics, however, when a client asks us to export hardware immediately, we recommend a 24-48 hour vetting and preparation period prior to each shipment. In our experience, a few hour’s delay to ensure accuracy is a minor inconvenience that prevents the devastating setbacks that border seizures or tariff penalties can pose. Rather than wait to figure out what we missed at the border, the in-house customs experts at CentricsIT choose to remove all liability on the front end. That’s liability that you would otherwise have to face.