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What We Do

If you only infrequently import goods into Canada, we offer friendly and efficient customs brokerage services to rapidly get your shipments where they need to be in Canada, with transparent, predictable and affordable pricing.

For high-frequency importers, our brokerage services are also available to you. We can also provide you instead with our easy-to-use ProImporter customs software - the same software we use ourselves - to give you greater control over your logistics and increase your cost savings.

If you are a company located outside of Canada that sells into the country, you can become a Non-Resident Importer (NRI) and use either our brokerage services or our ProImporter software to sell to your Canadian clients as if you were located here, enabling you to quote them a landed cost for the goods they buy from you.

Many of our customers use NGB Brokerage or our ProImporter software to do the customs clearances for their FedEx and UPS courier shipments, not only to save money but also to prevent their customers from having to pay additional COD fees/duties/taxes at delivery. This has the added advantage of allowing our clients to settle up with the CBSA for their duties and taxes for their shipments only once a month rather than for each individual shipment.

If you don’t already have regularly scheduled freight, we can leverage our relationships with an array of freight partners to ensure that when you have goods sitting anywhere in the world, we can get them picked up, customs cleared and delivered safely to your dock in a timely manner and at a competitive price.

Finally, we can also bring our decades of experience to bear to help you with any other customs issues you may have, including classification audits, refunds, customs drawbacks and preparing you for upcoming regulatory changes. Contact us today!

Customs Brokerage

For almost twenty years, NoGlobalBorders has been providing customs brokerage services to Canadian importers and US exporters to Canada. Many of our clients have been with us for the entire two decades, and the reasons are easy to identify:

  • Accurate and Timely Customs Clearances - Our decades of experience in classifying products means that your goods will be classified accurately, ensuring that you pay the minimum required duty and tax while remaining in compliance with all customs regulations. We customs clear your goods electronically at any port across Canada, filing your shipment information well ahead of the time at which your shipment arrives at the Canadian frontier, whether it’s coming by sea, highway, air, or train.
  • Price predictability - Our pricing is clear and transparent, with no hidden or cryptic fees on our invoices. Equally important, we do not increase our prices with the value of our clients’ goods, unlike many of our competitors.
  • Superior Customer Service - Whether you’re a large national account or a sole proprietorship, if you call us for help you’ll be talking to someone who knows your history with NGB and understands your business. You’ll know the name of the person who handles your account and they’ll know yours.
  • Value-adding Technology Innovation - As technology improves and the electronic requirements at the CBSA evolve, our business adapts quickly and our clients benefit. From the earliest days of electronically filing customs information, NGB has been at the forefront of electronic filing, getting our clients’ shipments quickly through the border across the country, while making sure their shipments are customs compliant.
  • Clear and Prompt Communication - When regulations change, you’ll be notified automatically, and details about how they will affect your business will be e-mailed to you and posted on our website, without using jargon.
  • Customs Audit Support - Because all of our clients’ data is stored and their paperwork digitized, NGB can easily support your business in the event that you are audited by the CBSA. We can usually pull audit requests for our clients’ data within 24 hours to quickly expedite the audit process, leaving our clients free to focus on their core business.
  • Proactive advice - As we get to know our clients’ business, we can begin to provide advice on their customs process, including the potential to claim back duties and taxes via drawback, as well as suggesting alternative, more accurate commodity classifications that bring them into better customs compliance.
  • Data Analysis - Because we store every shipment a client has ever had us customs clear, we can provide detailed time-series analysis of every commodity you have ever imported, which can help you understand the evolution of the landed costs of your goods. This wealth of information can also help you to make better sourcing and freight decisions.

To get a price quote, talk to a sales agent or get started, contact us!

ProImporter Self Clearance Software

When NoGlobalBorders was founded 30 years ago, PC’s still ran Windows 3.0, customs brokerage was a mostly paper-based activity and very few companies understood the customs process well enough to do it themselves. While this was great job security for customs brokers, it increased the cost to importers, slowed their shipments at the border and blocked them from gaining any deep insights into their sourcing and freight because they lacked any data to analyse (the brokers pretty much kept it all for themselves).

Even back then, we had the idea that it was possible to create a piece of software that would allow Canadian importers (or US exporters to Canada) to handle their own customs brokerage. We could codify the hundreds of rules and regulations that apply to thousands of different commodities in a program that would ensure customs compliance, produce detailed import data and, most importantly, save importers significant amounts of money.

NoGlobalBorders ProImportertm software is a remarkable tool that allows importers to control their entire customs process from their PC, electronically releasing and accounting for their shipments with Canada Customs. For more than thirty years (!!), Canadian importers using ProImporter have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in brokerage fees, and used their increased insight into their trade processes to improve relationships with carriers, vendors and Canada Customs.

Over those three decades ProImporter has evolved to allow multiple users across multiple locations to clear their goods electronically into Canada at every Canadian port, whether via truck, ship, rail, or air.

Why might your organization consider licensing our software?

  • Significant Cost Savings - Depending on your volume, you could be paying less than 1/10th of the cost/entry that you are currently paying your current customs broker.
  • Control Over Commodity Classification - You know your products better than your customs broker, and are liable for any penalties due to misclassification, even if your broker was responsible. Keep an up-to-date catalogue of your product classifications in ProImporter to ensure the correct HS code is always used. You can also lean on NGB to help you classify your products.
  • Landed-Unit-Cost Analysis: Assuming you enter accurate freight cost data, you can use the data generated by ProImporter to see how varying exchange rates, carrier selection, vendor, country of origin and classification combine to generate changing landed-unit costs over time. It’s all at your fingertips!
  • Reduced Delays at Border - Because you do your own advance clearance filing, your shipments won’t be waiting at the border while your customs broker prioritizes the shipments of their larger clients.
  • More Insight Into Your Logistics Process - Once you start taking control of your importing process, new ways of increasing efficiency often show up as you become more familiar with it (e.g consolidating shipments, drop-shipping, opportunities for drawbacks)
  • Multi-seat licensing, multi-location licensing - Our ProImporter software scales as you do. If you want to use it to support multiple users across multiple businesses or divisions, that’s not a problem. 
  • Handles all Typical Customs Entries and Messages - (Here’s where we get to use a bunch of Acronyms!) B3’s, F-Type (LVS), ACROSS, IID, SWI, RNS our software handles them all, and files them electronically via secure internet connections. 
  • Assists in Commodity Classification - The software has shortcuts to all relevant CBSA websites to aid in the classification of your products, including CFIA-AIRS and the Customs Tariff. We also include a searchable database of the Customs Tariff within the program. 
  • Regular Updates of HS Codes and other critical information - The program provides daily updates of exchange and tariff rates, customs broadcast messages, and almost instantaneous updates on the release status of your shipments and the status of your accounting transactions
  • Extended Payment Privileges with CBSA - One of the major advantages to self-clearance is the ability to pay the CBSA for your accrued duty and tax liabilities only once a month. In addition to ensuring that your customers don’t have to pay COD for courier shipments (you cover this and embed the cost in your pricing), this gives you much greater control over your cash flow.
  • Integration with Purchasing Systems - ProImporter can integrate with your purchasing system to import electronic shipment information and reduce/eliminate keying errors. The values declared to customs will agree exactly with your accounting systems. 
  • Audit-proof Customs Compliance - In the event that you are audited by Canada Customs for compliance, you will have the ability to instantly produce any information they require to substantiate your declarations and regulatory concordance.
  • All Backed by a Licensed Customs Broker - At the end of the day, the software (and you!) are supported by a Licensed Customs Broker with decades of experience. NGB is both the developer and a user of the ProImporter software, so any issues that arise can be instantly addressed, whether it’s a software problem or an opportunity to educate the importer.

For more information about our ProImporter solution, contact us!

Other Customs Services

Booking Freight

Whether your shipment is arriving via air, ocean, highway or rail, we can leverage our carrier relationships to get you great rates. We can even arrange for local delivery for you once it arrives at your local customs port.

Harmonized Code Audits

NGB can bring decades of experience in commodity classification to make sure that all of your goods have been correctly classified, suggesting alternatives where applicable. This will minimize your duty and tax liability while ensuring that you stay compliant with all customs regulations. We can also help you obtain refunds for improperly classified commodities where you’ve overpaid, and we can also bring you into compliance if we discover historical classification errors that may make you vulnerable to CBSA audit.

Drawbacks

If your organization has imported goods for which you’ve paid tax and/or customs duty. There are circumstances under which you can claim back that money (if, for example, you’ve directly exported the unmodified goods, or in some cases if you’ve used the imported goods in the manufacture of products that are to be exported.) This can be true even if you were not the original importer of the goods. Drawback rights can be reassigned from the importer who sold the goods to you. NGB can help you claim back these funds.

Customs Consulting

NGB can bring its decades of customs experience to bear on your customs problems. We can look at your end-to-end importing process to find ways to make it more efficient and cost-effective. All of our consulting engagements are conducted with a focus on three main goals: demonstrated return on investment, increased regulatory compliance and practical recommendations that are both easy to implement and transfer knowledge to your organization.

Types of engagements NGB will undertake for you

  • Compliance Verification Audits – mimics a CBSA audit, makes sure that your accounting, receiving and customs are all in alignment, and that you have a process for addressing those occasions when they are not.
  • Proof of Origin Compliance Review – NGB will review and maintain the certificates of origin required to substantiate preferential HS classifications. If you are claiming reduced duty under CETA, CUSMA, CEFTA or other Free Trade Agreement, our review will ensure that you have valid, properly completed Proof of Origin documentation
  • Export Compliance Review – NGB will review all currently-generated export documents and related permits to ensure full compliance with CBSA export regulations.

Assistance with Customs Audits

If your company’s importing history is being audited by the CBSA, we can help you prepare the documentation required to prove that your organization has been in compliance with all rules and regulations, and suggest ways to improve your process and record-keeping to ensure that if it happens again you’ll be easily able to provide what they require.

Stay In the Know

From time to time we send out e-mails updating our clients and friends about upcoming Canada Customs procedures and regulations, and our thoughts on contemporary trade issues. Sign up to get on our mailing list!

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