Frequently asked questions

How do I ensure compliance with changing regulations?

Senda gives you a source-backed operational record — duty estimates and HS classifications tied to your shipments — so the numbers you file are traceable rather than guessed. It checks a shipment's ISF elements before the filing is due and, for wood, prepares the Lacey Act declaration data your broker files. On the Operations plan, compliance alerts also watch your shipments: a document your checklist marks required that is still missing as delivery nears, a shipment overdue or stalled before departure, a tracking exception left unhandled, and an upload that could not be read — alongside US trade-rule changes (see below).

What documents are required for customs clearance?

Common documents include the commercial invoice, packing list, and certificate of origin — the exact list depends on your product and destination. Senda drafts five documents from data you have already entered: a commercial invoice and a proforma invoice from an order; a packing list and a shipper's letter of instruction from a shipment; and, for a shipment from Korea to the United States, a KORUS certification of origin that leaves the preference criterion and the signature to the certifier. All are drafts — you review them and send them yourself, and Senda does not file with any customs authority. Senda does not generate a bill of lading, a licence, any other certificate of origin, or any other form; for those, upload or email in the documents you already have, and Senda stores, extracts structured data from, and organizes them, versioned against each shipment. It reads digital and scanned bills of lading for review like an invoice, and checks the invoice, packing list and bill of lading on a shipment against each other before your broker files.

How can I avoid delays and fines?

Our duty calculation tool estimates import duty by HS code, origin, destination, and value. For the United States it uses the full USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule — every chapter, with the General, FTA-preferential (via the Special-column program indicators) and Column 2 rates as published, pinned to the exact HTS revision. Korea and the EU use an indicative reference set — focused today on the wood, pulp, paper, and wooden-furniture chapters our customers ship most — pending full ingestion. Per-unit (specific/compound) rates, ambiguous subheadings, and unmatched routes return an honest “cannot determine” rather than a fabricated number, and every figure carries a “this is the listed rate — verify with your licensed customs broker” disclaimer (a listed HTS rate is not always the rate collected). On a shipment, each order line also flags any Section 301, Section 232 or AD/CVD duty that may apply, with its source and dates, and a flagged duty is added to the estimate only once you confirm it. Our HS classification tool suggests Harmonized System codes retrieved from — and validated against — that same full US Harmonized Tariff Schedule, so it only ever returns real subheadings, never an invented one. Ranking is AI-assisted, and we say so plainly: a search step first pulls a shortlist of real subheadings out of the schedule, an AI model then ranks that shortlist, and every code it hands back is re-checked against both the official US HTS nomenclature and the shortlist it was offered, so the model can reorder real subheadings but cannot introduce one of its own. In a test against 100 U.S. Customs (CBP) binding rulings on wood, paper and steel goods that were held out from development, given the product each ruling describes, CBP's own 6-digit subheading was Senda's first suggestion 64% of the time and among its first three 75% of the time. Treat them as a starting point for a licensed customs broker, not a determination. Recall is honestly scoped: the curated keyword lexicon behind it covers five chapters completely — wood (chapter 44), pulp (47), paper and paperboard (48), iron and steel (72), and articles of iron or steel (73) — so those are the chapters it covers most completely. Outside them, matching falls back to the schedule's own wording, and the tool tells you it cannot confidently classify this product rather than offering a low-confidence guess. Each suggestion comes with a confidence level, whether the ranking was AI-assisted or a plain dataset match, and the official description as evidence. Getting these right up front reduces the misclassification and valuation errors that lead to delays and fines. Interactive training modules to educate your team on customs procedures are on our roadmap (see below).

Coming soon Interactive training modules

Does Senda alert me when trade rules change?

Yes, on the Operations plan. US trade-rule changes — antidumping/countervailing duty actions, Section 232 and 301 actions, CBP rules, APHIS plant-health rules and FDA actions that concern cosmetics — are pulled from the Federal Register and filtered to the HS codes you have classified and the origin countries on your shipments, then raised on the affected shipments through the existing notifications. The feed is checked about once an hour, as well as whenever you open the compliance alerts page: it is polled rather than real-time, covers the United States only, and tells you that a rule changed in a related category — it is not legal advice and not a determination that a specific entry is affected. Shipment alerts arrive the same way: an open shipment within a week of its estimated delivery that is missing a document its checklist marks required, a shipment more than two days past its estimated delivery with no delivery recorded, a shipment stuck before departure for two weeks, a tracking exception left unhandled, and an uploaded document that could not be read. Non-US regulators are not covered.

How do I get help with something not covered here?

Send us a message from the contact page and we'll get back to you — no account or ticket system required.