Five Ways Importers Simplify Customs Management

Managing customs within Canadian supply chains involves wide-ranging responsibilities—from ensuring compliance to mitigating import costs wherever possible. Add in evolving customs and trade policy developments, such as regulatory burdens or shifting trade agreement structures, and the workload becomes even more complex.

At the same time, programs like CARM are shifting more responsibility directly onto importers, making visibility and control over customs data more critical than ever.

C.H. Robinson’s Canada Customs Analytics tool helps importers monitor customs activity, strengthen compliance, improve import processes, and identify supply chain developments that require immediate attention. Here are five ways importers are using it to strengthen their customs management strategies:

1. Stay ahead of CARM requirements and importer accountability

Canada’s CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management (CARM) program has fundamentally changed how importers manage customs compliance. Importers must register in the CARM Client Portal and maintain their own financial security to participate in the Release Prior to Payment (RPP) program. This shift places accountability directly on the importer and is essential for preventing shipment delays or holds.

Key responsibilities under CARM include:

Maintaining an active CARM Client Portal account.
Posting financial security (surety bond or cash) to obtain RPP privileges.
Delegating authority to your customs broker within the portal.
Ensuring all account and program information remains accurate and up to date.

Having a clear and complete view of customs activity plays an important role in supporting these requirements. Canada Customs Analytics helps importers monitor entry activity, identify discrepancies, and maintain more accurate records—making it easier to stay aligned with CARM expectations and avoid compliance gaps.

By strengthening overall visibility and control, importers are better positioned to meet their obligations, support smoother clearances, and reduce the risk of avoidable disruptions.

2. Control costs through deeper sourcing and spend analysis

With duties, taxes, and surtaxes continuing to evolve, many importers are prioritizing a more detailed understanding of their true landed costs.

Canada Customs Analytics tracks all duties, taxes, and fees associated with importing into Canada—including GST and any applicable surtaxes—providing visibility into where costs are accumulating and where there may be opportunities to reduce them.

It provides both a high-level spend summary and a deeper breakdown of how duties, taxes, and fees contribute to total costs. This makes it easier to spot trends, uncover missed savings, and compare landed costs across suppliers and origins.

3. Identify and manage compliance risks

Compliance challenges are often difficult to detect until they create delays or trigger audits. Increasingly, importers are using data to take a more proactive approach.

With detailed customs data and built-in risk visibility, Canada Customs Analytics highlights potential issues across the supply chain, including classification anomalies, supplier concerns, valuation inconsistencies, and country-of-origin risk indicators. An interactive supplier map helps you visualize exposure to evolving regulations, including forced labour legislation and international trade measures.

This enables teams to address issues earlier, reducing the likelihood of penalties, shipment holds, or disruptions tied to evolving regulatory requirements.

4. Reduce delays through better performance visibility

Delays in customs clearance are often tied to documentation gaps, timing issues, or inconsistent processes across partners. Without clear visibility, these bottlenecks can be difficult to diagnose.

Canada Customs Analytics provides customizable KPIs to evaluate carrier utilization, document timeliness, and entry submission performance, regardless of who manages transportation. These insights help identify bottlenecks, reduce delays, and improve overall customs cycle time.

5. Centralize Canadian customs activity

For many importers, customs data still lives across multiple systems, brokers, and teams—making it difficult to get a complete picture of activity.

The Canada Customs Analytics tool brings customs data together in one centralized location and provides strategic insights into where importers can mitigate risk, reduce costs, track carrier performance, and improve entry timeliness. Instead of piecing together reports manually, importers can access data that is automatically compiled and updated daily, providing near real-time visibility into customs entries as they are cleared.

This makes it easier to move between high-level trends and detailed, SKU-level insights—whether monitoring overall performance or investigating specific issues. With a more unified view across teams, importers can spend less time gathering data and more time acting on it.

Over time, access to historical customs data further strengthens this visibility, allowing teams to track trends, measure progress, and better understand how changes in sourcing, compliance, or operations are impacting their supply chain.

Turning data into a more resilient customs strategy

As customs requirements continue to evolve, importers are placing greater emphasis on visibility, accuracy, and control. To learn more about how Canada Customs Analytics can support your customs strategy, connect with one of our Trusted Advisor^® experts.\