A packing list becomes a customs declaration

Ethiopian customs clearance runs on retyping. An importer sends a packing list and an invoice; a clearing agent reads them, works out an HS code for every item, orders the lines, estimates the duty and tax, and enters the result on the customs platform. It is skilled work, and almost all of it is transcription.

The challenge

Document extraction is where tools like this usually overreach. Send every page to a language model and you get fluent, confident, occasionally wrong numbers — which in a customs declaration is the one failure mode you cannot absorb.

The approach

Rules first, AI second. Every document is read by pattern rules, and AI is used only where the rules give up. A scanned document is accepted from the rules only under a stricter test: high OCR confidence, no HS-code column, digits-only numbers, and a printed total for every numeric column that reconciles against the lines exactly. Anything that fails goes to AI, and anything AI touches is marked for a human to confirm. For HS codes the order is explicit — a printed code wins, then an AI suggestion, then a reviewer's correction, and every code must resolve to a valid HS 2022 heading.

The build

The unit of work is the import job: one import under one permit, holding its documents, items, declaration lines and estimate. Invoice lines are matched back to packing-list items so value, unit price and country of origin flow through, with a panel for matching the ones that do not. Per job, the agent chooses whether items sharing an HS code and unit merge into a single line, and whether lines follow packing-list order or HS order. Duty and tax come from the tenant's own rate table with the working shown, and a CFR or CIF invoice is worked back to its FOB value where the setting calls for it.

Every customer gets a fully isolated database rather than a shared one with a tenant column — in a product holding other companies' commercial documents, isolation is a feature you can explain to a buyer. Sixty-two test suites cover the pipeline, including tenant isolation itself.

Where it stands

In active development. An Excel export of the ordered lines and estimate is working; a browser extension that fills the customs item form directly is next.