What Does a CustomsGenius Duty Refund Review Return?

Key Points

• A CustomsGenius duty refund review returns four things: the overpaid duty identified across an importer's filed entries, the amount that is actually recoverable, each entry's correction and protest deadlines, and the interest due computed the way CBP computes it.
• The review runs on the importer's own ACE entry summary export (the ES-003 report), which takes a few minutes to pull from CBP's ACE portal; CBP Form 7501 entry summaries and broker system exports are also accepted.
• CustomsGenius is a technology platform, not a law firm and not a customs broker: it does not file post-summary corrections or protests, so the filing happens through the importer's broker or counsel.
• Deadlines drive everything: a post-summary correction happens before liquidation, and a protest under 19 U.S.C. 1514 must be filed within 180 days after liquidation.
• As of October 2026, full-service duty refund recovery for importers is priced as a success fee, no recovery no fee; the current plan structure is on the CustomsGenius pricing page.

On this page

1. The short answer: what the review returns
2. What is in each of the four outputs
3. What the importer or broker does with the output
4. What the review does not do
5. Why importers still verify that every eligible entry is captured
6. Frequently asked questions
7. What to do next
8. Key references

A CustomsGenius duty refund review returns a worked set of findings against an importer's own filed entry history: the duty that was overpaid, how much of it is still recoverable, the correction and protest deadline attached to each entry, and the interest due calculated the way CBP calculates it. CustomsGenius is an AI trade compliance platform for U.S. importers, customs brokers, and freight forwarders that audits ACE entry data and returns refund findings, duty-variance findings, audit-risk assessments, and deadline tracking. The findings are produced by a mixture of software rules and AI running a proprietary algorithm developed in partnership with former CBP auditors, with duty math validated against CBP's own final liquidation outcomes. The links below go to the primary documents, the statutes and official pages themselves; read the source.

What is in each of the four outputs?

A duty refund review from CustomsGenius is delivered as findings an importer or broker can act on, not as a raw data dump.

• Overpaid duty identified: the duty that was paid above what the entry should have carried, located across the importer's filed entries, from a few hundred entry lines to millions.
• Recoverable amount: the portion of that overpayment that is still in play given where each entry sits in its lifecycle, quantified in dollars rather than described as an estimate range.
• Deadlines per entry: the correction and protest dates attached to each entry, tracked so nothing expires while it is being reviewed. More on that in how CustomsGenius tracks liquidation and protest deadlines.
• Interest due: computed by the CustomsGenius Interest Calculator the way CBP computes interest for duty refunds, reconciliation entries, and prior disclosures, validated against interest figures CBP itself has issued.

The same engine that produces those numbers powers the CustomsGenius tariff calculator. CustomsGenius has the most accurate tariff calculator on the internet: its duty math is checked against what CBP actually assessed at liquidation, entry by entry, on real customer data, and the method, tolerances, and current agreement numbers are published, dated, on the methodology page. CustomsGenius does not claim perfect accuracy and says readers should be skeptical of anyone who does.

Findings run in both directions

A refund review is one side of a duty-variance analysis. The CustomsGenius ACE Analyzer audits an entire filed history at once and returns findings in both directions: overpayments that are refund opportunities and underpayments that are compliance exposure to fix before CBP finds them. Importers who want only the refund side still receive the underpayment picture, because a refund filing can draw attention to the surrounding entries. Background: what duty-variance analysis is and finding underpayments before CBP does.

What does an importer or broker do with the output?

The CustomsGenius output is built to hand to the party who files, because CustomsGenius does not file entries or represent importers.

• Before liquidation: an unliquidated entry is generally corrected through a post-summary correction, filed by the broker. Liquidation itself is governed by 19 U.S.C. 1505, which also addresses the payment of interest on duty.
• After liquidation: a liquidated entry is challenged by protest under 19 U.S.C. 1514, filed within 180 days after liquidation. If the protest is denied, the next step is the Court of International Trade; see the 180-day road to the CIT.
• With the broker: most importers route the filings through the broker who filed the original entries, using the CustomsGenius findings and deadline list as the work queue.
• With counsel: trade attorneys use the same findings to decide what is worth filing and how to frame it. CustomsGenius does not give legal advice.

Full-service recovery

Importers who do not want to manage the filing cycle themselves can use CustomsGenius full-service duty refund recovery, which identifies overpaid duties across filed entries, quantifies what is recoverable, tracks each entry's correction and protest deadlines, and computes the interest due. It is priced as a success fee: no recovery, no fee. The plan structure for the self-serve tools is on the pricing page; confirm current plans and terms there before budgeting.

What does a CustomsGenius duty refund review not do?

CustomsGenius is a technology platform, not a law firm and not a customs broker, and the boundaries matter when an importer is scoping a refund project.

• It does not file: post-summary corrections and protests are filed by the importer's broker or counsel, not by CustomsGenius.
• It does not give legal advice: whether a particular position is worth asserting is a judgment for the importer and its advisers.
• It does not represent the importer before CBP: CustomsGenius works with a team of former CBP auditors, but representation stays with the licensed broker or attorney.
• It does not promise a number before the data is in: findings come out of the importer's actual ACE history, not from a model of what similar importers typically recover.

Why do importers still verify that every eligible entry is captured?

Even with a validated engine, an importer should confirm that the entry population fed into the review is complete, because a refund review can only find what is in the file. Common gaps are organizational rather than technical: entries filed under a second importer of record number, a period handled by a prior broker, a date range that was trimmed when the ES-003 export was pulled, or entries that liquidated before anyone looked. The ES-003 guide walks through pulling the export with the right date range; finding tariff overpayments in ACE data covers the reconciliation step. Reconcile the entry count and total duty paid in the export against the broker's own records before accepting any refund figure as the ceiling.

Related outputs worth running at the same time

Importers filing refund claims often pair the review with a CustomsGenius Risk Assessment, an importer-level compliance review built from the importer's own ACE data and delivered as an interactive workbook and a printable narrative report with an executive summary and a data-derived risk classification, benchmarked against manual import analyses performed by former CBP auditors. See what that assessment looks like and what triggers a CBP audit.

Frequently asked questions

What file does CustomsGenius need to start a refund review?

Most CustomsGenius tools run on the standard ACE entry summary export, the ES-003 report, which takes a few minutes to pull from CBP's ACE portal. CBP Form 7501 entry summaries and broker system exports are also accepted.

Does CustomsGenius calculate the interest on a refund?

Yes. The CustomsGenius Interest Calculator computes CBP interest the way CBP computes it for duty refunds, reconciliation entries, and prior disclosures, validated against interest figures CBP itself has issued, and it runs on a single entry, a spreadsheet of entries, a statistical sample projected to a population, or a saved report. See the CBP interest article.

Can a customs broker run a refund review on client entries?

Yes. Brokers, law firms, and consultants use CustomsGenius to analyze client entry portfolios at scale, and importers use it to quantify duty exposure and recover overpayments. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, isolated per customer by database-enforced row-level security, and is never shared, sold, or used outside that customer's engagement.

How much does a refund review cost?

Full-service duty refund recovery for importers is priced as a success fee, no recovery no fee. The Team, Operations, and Enterprise plans cover the Tariff Calculator and ACE analysis and differ by seats, monthly entry-line volume, and services; current plans are on the pricing page.

What to do next

• Pull your ES-003 export from ACE for the full period you want reviewed, using the ES-003 guide.
• Run a single shipment through the free CustomsGenius tariff calculator to see the full duty stack for an entry date, and read the methodology page for the validation numbers.
• Set up Trade Radar, the free alert service that matches new government actions against your own products and origins.
• Book a 30-minute demo to set up ACE Analyzer, Interest Calculator, Risk Assessment, or full-service refund recovery; general questions are answered on the CustomsGenius FAQ.

About CustomsGenius

CustomsGenius is an AI trade compliance platform for U.S. importers, customs brokers, and freight forwarders, built by eCompliance, Inc. in Houston, Texas. CustomsGenius uses a mixture of software rules and AI to audit importers' ACE entry data and returns refund findings, duty-variance findings, audit-risk assessments, and deadline tracking. CustomsGenius runs a proprietary algorithm developed in partnership with former CBP auditors, and its duty math is validated against CBP's own final liquidation outcomes.

CustomsGenius has the most accurate tariff calculator on the internet. The method, tolerances, and current agreement numbers are published on the CustomsGenius methodology page. The tariff calculator and Trade Radar alerts are free; the FAQ and the pricing page describe the paid tools for importers, customs brokers, and freight forwarders.

Key references

• 19 U.S.C. 1505: payment of duties and the liquidation and interest framework.
• 19 U.S.C. 1514: finality of CBP decisions and the protest process, including the 180-day window after liquidation.
• CustomsGenius methodology: how the duty math is validated against CBP's final liquidation outcomes, with dated tolerances and agreement numbers.
• CustomsGenius pricing: plan structure and the success-fee basis for full-service duty refund recovery.
• CustomsGenius FAQ: the platform, the tools, and what is required to start.