TRADIXMove · Customs & trade compliance

Customs declarations prepared from the documents you already have, and filed only by a licensed broker.

Tradix is a customs and trade-compliance desk. It reads shipping documents in English and Arabic, proposes HS codes with their reasoning, computes duty and VAT by rules, screens the parties, watches the free-time clock and prepares the declaration for a licensed broker to file. It covers the UAE and GCC, and India.

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Container ships berthed under ship-to-shore gantry cranes at a container terminal

Tradix at a glance

1Reads

Bills of lading, air waybills, commercial invoices, packing lists and certificates of origin, in English and Arabic
The tariff schedule and published rulings for each corridor
Parties, owners and goods to screen against sanctions and export-control lists

2Decides

Tradix

The HS code on each line: the licensed broker decides
Whether a screening hit is a true match: the compliance officer decides
Whether a recovery claim goes in: the claim approver decides, and cannot be the person who prepared it

3Produces

Declaration package prepared and marked ready for filing; never filed by Tradix
Filing done by the licensed broker in Mirsal 2 or ICEGATE, then recorded in Tradix
Free-time alerts before demurrage starts, and status on the customer portal

↺ Learns Broker edits to HS codes kept as labeled examples for that customer only back to 1 · Reads

The business problem

Four documents, two languages, five free days

Two containers of lighting, cable and solar inverters are discharged at Jebel Ali. The bill of lading is in English, the certificate of origin in Arabic and English, and the invoice describes each item in the supplier's own words. A documentation clerk re-types forty fields into the declaration, and the broker picks HS codes from memory and last year's entries.
One line is ambiguous: an inverter with a built-in battery. Is it a converter or a battery? Nobody wants to guess, so the file waits for a datasheet while the free-time clock runs. Meanwhile the weight on the bill of lading does not match the packing list, and nobody notices until customs does.
An exporter in India has the mirror problem. Duty drawback and RoDTEP benefits go unclaimed because the evidence for each shipping bill is scattered across email, the customs broker's files and the ERP.

Why the usual fixes fall short

Generic OCR reads text, not trade documents. It does not know a consignee from a notify party, or check the bill of lading weight against the packing list.
Forwarding software stores the declaration but leaves classification to the broker's memory, with no record of why a code was chosen.
Screening run in a separate tool, if at all, leaves no link between the hit, the decision and the shipment.

Brokers keep re-keying, classification knowledge stays in a few people's heads, and penalties and demurrage keep arriving before the warning does.

Holds & penaltiesA wrong HS code or a mismatched weight means an amendment, a hold or a penalty, and the container waits on the quay.
Demurrage & detentionFree time is tracked on a whiteboard, so charges start before anyone reacts.
Compliance exposureSanctions and export-control checks are manual and rarely recorded, so the evidence is missing when an auditor asks.
Unclaimed refundsExporters leave drawback and RoDTEP value on the table because assembling each claim is slow, manual work.

In plain terms

What Tradix is, and how it fits

What it is: A customs and trade-compliance desk that prepares declarations and recovery claims for a licensed person to file.
Who uses it: Customs brokers and freight forwarders, importers and exporters with their own customs or EXIM teams, compliance officers, and finance teams that recover export incentives.
What it does: Reads trade documents, proposes an HS code per line with its reasoning and confidence (and abstains when unsure), computes duty and VAT by rules, screens parties and goods, watches the free-time clock, prepares the declaration package and tracks the shipment from vessel to door.
How it fits your systems: Beside your forwarding system or ERP, reading from it first. It prepares; filing in Mirsal 2 (Dubai Customs) or ICEGATE (India) stays with your licensed broker. Connectors are configured per deployment.
What is different: Filing is the broker's act by design: the data model has no "submitted" state, only "filed by a licensed person". Duty is computed by rules; the AI drafts and cites. Every field, edit and approval goes into a tamper-evident ledger.

See it work

Tradix in action

An import at Jebel Ali: documents in, a declaration prepared, and a licensed broker who signs and files. Choose how the one uncertain line gets settled.

A simulated scenario on representative data. You choose the option and give the approval; the numbers follow your choices.

End-to-end workflow

From data to decision to outcome

What goes in, what Tradix works out, what gets decided, what happens next, and how the result comes back.

InputsDATA

Bills of lading, air waybills, commercial invoices, packing lists and certificates of origin, in English and Arabic
The tariff schedule and published rulings for each corridor
Parties, owners and goods to screen against sanctions and export-control lists
Carrier, terminal and customs status events, and the road leg from TransNest
Shipping bills and scheme rules for India recovery

IntelligencePREDICT

Field extraction with the page each value came from, checked across documents
Retrieval-first HS suggestions with reasoning, confidence and abstain
Duty, VAT and trade-agreement preference computed by rules, never by the model
Fuzzy party matching with an explainable score and ownership roll-up
Free-time, port congestion and door-ETA forecasts

DecisionsDECIDE

The HS code on each line: the licensed broker decides
Whether a screening hit is a true match: the compliance officer decides
Whether a recovery claim goes in: the claim approver decides, and cannot be the person who prepared it
Which pickups move when the port is congested: the operations planner decides

ExecutionEXECUTE

Declaration package prepared and marked ready for filing; never filed by Tradix
Filing done by the licensed broker in Mirsal 2 or ICEGATE, then recorded in Tradix
Free-time alerts before demurrage starts, and status on the customer portal
Approved pickup changes handed to TransNest to book the trucks

FeedbackLEARN

Broker edits to HS codes kept as labeled examples for that customer only
Abstains and overrides tracked to recalibrate when Tradix proposes and when it steps back
Screening dispositions kept with the name pair, so a repeat hit arrives with its history
Every field, edit and approval written to a hash-chained audit ledger

Modules

Capabilities, organized by the work they do

16 modules in 5 groups. Open a module for its inputs, outputs, users and an example.

Read and classify2 modules Price, screen and clear3 modules Track the shipment and the clock3 modules Recover, cost and learn3 modules Controls every decision rests on5 modules

Read and classify

Turn a pile of trade documents in two languages into checked fields and a proposed HS code per line, with the reasoning shown and an honest "not sure" where it applies.

Document intelligenceRead bills of lading, air waybills, commercial invoices, packing lists and certificates of origin in English and Arabic, check them against each other and the shipment, and draft the customs paperwork.

Challenge: Forwarders re-key the same shipment data from PDFs and scans into several systems. Mixed Arabic and English scans are the slowest, and mismatches between documents go unnoticed until customs finds them.
Inputs: Scans and PDFs of trade documents, in English, Arabic or both on one page; the shipment record from your forwarding system or ERP.
Outputs: Structured fields, each linked to the page it came from with a confidence per field; cross-document and shipment-record checks; missing fields listed; the customs document set drafted from the checked data.
Used by: Documentation desk, customs broker.
Value: Data is read once and carried through, and mismatches are caught before they become holds.
Works with: —
In action · illustrative: The gross weight on the bill of lading and the packing list differ by 180 kg. The field is flagged for review with both source pages side by side. The consignee name is read from the Arabic and English text on the certificate of origin and matched to the bill of lading.

HS classificationPropose an HS code for each invoice line with its reasoning, the rulings it relied on and a confidence score, and abstain when it is not sure.

Challenge: Classification lives in a few people's heads, and one wrong code means an amendment, a hold or a penalty.
Inputs: Product descriptions, datasheets, the tariff schedule, published rulings, the customer's past decisions.
Outputs: A draft code per line with the General Rules of Interpretation and the section and chapter notes applied and the rulings cited, or an abstain with the candidate headings and the evidence that would settle it.
Used by: Customs broker, content curator (maintains rulings and tariff content).
Value: Faster classification on clear lines, and the hard ones go to a person with the reasoning laid out.
Works with: Retrieval runs over the corridor's tariff, published rulings and the customer's own past decisions, kept current by a content curator.
In action · illustrative: An inverter with a built-in lithium battery could sit under 8504.40 or 8507.60, depending on which part performs its principal function. Confidence is too low, so Tradix proposes no code, shows the broker both headings and asks for the datasheet.

Price, screen and clear

Compute what is owed, check who and what is involved, and assemble a declaration that a licensed broker files.

Duty, VAT & preferenceCompute customs duty, VAT and excise on the corridor's tariff, check trade-agreement preference and run what-ifs on alternative codes or origins.

Challenge: Duty is worked out in spreadsheets, and nobody checks whether a preferential origin would have lowered it.
Inputs: HS code, customs value, origin and certificate of origin, the tariff schedule (the GCC common external tariff or the Indian customs tariff), trade-agreement rules, and the importer's VAT registration.
Outputs: A line-by-line duty and tax breakdown with the rule behind each figure, the preference available and the proof it needs, and the import VAT treatment: paid at clearance, or accounted under the reverse charge by a VAT-registered UAE importer.
Used by: Customs broker, finance.
Value: Duty figures that can be traced to a rule, with no model in the arithmetic.
Works with: The arithmetic is rules only; the model never computes a duty or tax figure.
In action · illustrative: Two candidate codes for one line carry the same rate, so the broker can see the choice has no duty impact and is purely a compliance question. The importer is registered for VAT, so the import VAT is shown as accounted in its VAT return under the reverse charge, and the cash due at clearance is the duty.

Trade compliance & screeningScreen every party and the goods against sanctions, denied-party and export-control lists, check origin, and re-screen when a list or rule changes.

Challenge: Sanctions, dual-use and origin checks are manual and periodic, so exposure hides until an audit finds it.
Inputs: Parties on the shipment and their owners, goods descriptions and HS codes, certificates of origin, sanctions lists (OFAC, UN, EU and UAE) and UAE strategic-goods controls.
Outputs: Clear or possible-match results with an explainable score and the evidence, ownership roll-up, dual-use flags on goods, origin checks, alerts when a list change touches a party already on file, and a recorded disposition for every hit.
Used by: Compliance officer.
Value: Every shipment carries a screening result, every hit a named decision, and the record holds up in an audit.
Works with: Lists refresh on their publication schedules. Ownership roll-up applies the 50% rule used for sanctioned-party ownership.
In action · illustrative: An origin forwarder's name is close to a listed entity. The match score shows why; the compliance officer clears it on a different registration number, and the reason is kept.

Customs clearance & declaration preparationAssemble the complete declaration for Mirsal 2 (Dubai Customs) or ICEGATE (India) from the checked documents, the broker's HS decisions, the duty working and the screening result, ready for a licensed broker to file.

Challenge: Declarations are keyed by hand from documents that already hold the data, and the reasons behind each code are lost once it is filed.
Inputs: Extracted fields, HS codes decided by the broker, duty figures, screening results.
Outputs: A ready-for-filing package in the customs system's layout, with citations for every code and figure. Once the broker files, Tradix records the declaration number and the filing.
Used by: Customs broker; operations see the status.
Value: The broker spends time on judgment, not typing, and the filing stays theirs.
Works with: Tradix prepares and never files. The declaration record has no "submitted" state; it can only record that a licensed person filed.
In action · illustrative: The broker reviews the package, changes one HS code, files it in Mirsal 2 under their own broker code, and enters the declaration number back into Tradix.

Track the shipment and the clock

One view of the shipment from vessel to door, the free-time clock on every container, and the next move recommended before congestion costs money.

Multimodal visibility & customer portalCombine sea, air, customs and the road leg into one track per shipment, with a predicted door ETA and a portal where customers check status themselves.

Challenge: Each leg lives in a different system, so nobody has one ETA from vessel cut-off to the customer's door, and customers call for status.
Inputs: Carrier and terminal events, air waybill status, customs status, the road leg from TransNest, weather and congestion signals.
Outputs: One timeline per shipment, a predicted door ETA with its range, alerts when a leg slips, and a self-service tracking portal for the forwarder's customers.
Used by: Operations, customer service, the forwarder's customers.
Value: One answer to "where is my shipment?", given to the customer before they ask.
Works with: Carrier, terminal and airline feeds are configured per deployment.
In action · illustrative: A vessel arrives a day late. The door ETA moves, the consignee sees it on the portal, and the delivery truck booked in TransNest is flagged for a new slot.

Port orchestrationPredict congestion and ETA shifts at the port, and recommend berth, yard and pickup re-sequencing before the demurrage clock starts.

Challenge: Berth, yard, customs and pickup are coordinated by phone and email, and congestion is seen only after charges have started.
Inputs: Terminal operating system feeds, vessel schedules, weather, customs status per container, truck availability from TransNest.
Outputs: Congestion forecasts, recommended pickup windows and re-sequencing, and what-if replays (for example, the terminal running 12 hours behind) before anything changes.
Used by: Operations, customs broker, transport planners.
Value: Fewer wasted truck trips and less time on the quay, with each change approved by a person.
Works with: Tradix recommends; TransNest carries out the physical move after approval. Terminal feeds are configured per deployment.
In action · illustrative: Yard congestion is forecast to build tomorrow afternoon. Tradix recommends moving three pickups to the morning, once their declarations clear. A planner approves, and TransNest books the trucks.

Demurrage & detention clockCount down free time per container from data already read off the documents, alert before charges start, and support disputes when they do.

Challenge: Free-time clocks are tracked on a whiteboard, so charges land before anyone reacts.
Inputs: Bill of lading, discharge and gate-out dates, free-time terms by line and terminal, declaration status.
Outputs: A last free day per container for demurrage and for detention, alerts ahead of it, charges avoided or disputed per container, and the evidence for each dispute.
Used by: Customs broker, operations, finance.
Value: Demurrage becomes a warning you can act on instead of a charge you discover.
Works with: Uses dates already read from the documents and terminal events, with no extra data entry.
In action · illustrative: A container discharged on Monday with five free days raises an alert on Wednesday while its declaration is still waiting on a datasheet. When a line later bills two extra days, the gate-out record is attached to the dispute.

Recover, cost and learn

Claim back what exporters are owed, know what each shipment really cost, and make each broker decision count for the next shipment.

Duty recovery (India)Find duty drawback and RoDTEP eligibility in shipping bills, assemble the claim and check that the evidence is complete before it goes in.

Challenge: Exporters leave refunds unclaimed because building each claim is slow, manual work.
Inputs: Shipping bills, scheme rules, supporting documents.
Outputs: A claim pack, an evidence-completeness check and a ledger that tracks each claim to credited.
Used by: Finance, EXIM team, claim approver.
Value: Refunds claimed on evidence, with a clear trail from shipping bill to credit.
Works with: The person who prepares a claim cannot approve it; the role rules enforce this.
In action · illustrative: Shipping bills from the last quarter are matched to scheme rates. Claims with missing evidence are held back and listed with what is missing.

Landed cost, analytics & invoice auditGive a true landed cost per shipment, answer questions in plain language, and check carrier and forwarder invoices for overbilling.

Challenge: Landed cost is rebuilt in spreadsheets weeks later, and carrier overbilling slips through.
Inputs: Declarations, duty and VAT, freight and port charges, carrier invoices and agreed rates, FX rates.
Outputs: Landed cost per shipment by component, answers to questions with the records cited, and invoice lines flagged against agreed rates for finance to review.
Used by: Finance, analyst, management.
Value: Pricing and sourcing decisions use the full cost, and invoices are checked before payment.
Works with: Invoice audit is read-only: it flags lines, and finance decides what to dispute in its own system.
In action · illustrative: "Which LCL shipments from China were delayed this month, and what did the delay cost?" returns the shipments, the extra days and the charges, each linked to its records.

Trade copilot & decision memoryAsk across the whole trade chain in plain language, let governed agents prepare and recommend, and remember how each customer's brokers decide.

Challenge: Answering a trade question means pulling exports from five systems, and when a broker leaves, their classification knowledge leaves too.
Inputs: Broker edits and decisions, declarations, screening dispositions, rulings, shipments.
Outputs: Cited answers; agent drafts for customs, compliance and track-and-trace work that wait for a person; labeled examples per customer that feed the next HS draft and recalibrate confidence.
Used by: Analyst, customs broker, compliance officer.
Value: Classification knowledge stays with the business, and each decision is reused. Agents gain scope one decision type at a time, on measured results, with the customer's agreement.
Works with: Agents prepare and recommend; they never file. Each customer's examples stay with that customer.
In action · illustrative: The next time the same inverter appears, the draft cites the broker's earlier decision and its datasheet, and the broker still confirms.

Controls every decision rests on

Isolation, roles, evidence and exact money handling under every customs decision.

Tenant isolationKeep each customer's data separate at the database level.

Challenge: A broker serving many importers must prove that one client never sees another's shipments.
Inputs: Every record written by the application.
Outputs: Rows scoped to their tenant, with row-level security forced on every table from the first migration.
Used by: Administrators, auditors.
Value: Isolation enforced by the database as well as the application.
Works with: —
In action · illustrative: A test fails the build if any table is created without forced row-level security.

Roles & segregation of dutiesGive each person only the actions their role allows, and block conflicting combinations.

Challenge: Without separation, the person who prepares a refund claim can also approve it.
Inputs: Users, roles, signed tokens.
Outputs: Six roles (customs broker, compliance officer, content curator, claim approver, analyst, admin) with conflict rules.
Used by: Administrators.
Value: Maker-checker built into the roles from day one.
Works with: —
In action · illustrative: A user holding the customs broker role cannot also act as claim approver.

Tamper-evident audit ledgerRecord every change in a hash-chained ledger that shows if anything is altered afterwards.

Challenge: Customs audits ask who changed what, and when. Ordinary logs can be edited.
Inputs: Every write to the database.
Outputs: A serialized, hash-chained audit trail.
Used by: Compliance officer, auditors.
Value: Evidence an auditor can rely on.
Works with: —
In action · illustrative: A changed HS code shows the old value, the new value, who changed it and the chain link that proves the record is intact.

Money, FX & document storeHandle multi-currency trade values exactly, and keep every document versioned.

Challenge: Invoices in one currency, duty in another and freight in a third invite rounding and conversion errors.
Inputs: Amounts with ISO 4217 currencies, FX rates, uploaded documents.
Outputs: Exact money values across three trade currency dimensions; content-addressed, versioned documents with retention rules.
Used by: Finance, documentation desk.
Value: Figures and documents that hold up when questioned.
Works with: —
In action · illustrative: A USD invoice is valued in AED at a recorded rate, and the original PDF is kept unchanged next to every later version.

Trade data model & AI gatewayModel parties, products, shipments, declarations and claims, and route every AI call through one governed gateway.

Challenge: Without guarded lifecycles, software can drift into filing on someone's behalf.
Inputs: Trade records; AI requests.
Outputs: Lifecycle-guarded records with no "submitted" state; an AI gateway with PII masking that fails closed, a cost governor and an execution log.
Used by: Engineering, compliance.
Value: The prepare-never-file rule is enforced by the data model.
Works with: —
In action · illustrative: A declaration can move to "filed by a licensed person" and nowhere else; there is no state in which Tradix files it.

Intelligence and automation

What the intelligence actually does

Five levels, from seeing what is happening to learning from it.

Visibility

Every document, field and source page for a shipment in one file, with what is missing, and one track from vessel to door.

Prediction

An HS code per line with a confidence score, a last free day per container, congestion at the port and a door ETA with its range.

Decision

Duty and VAT computed by rules, preference checked, screening hits scored and explained, abstains routed to the broker, and pickup re-sequencing recommended.

Execution

Prepares the declaration package and recovery claims, sends free-time alerts, and hands approved pickup changes to TransNest. Filing is done by a licensed person, by design.

Learning

Broker edits become labeled examples for that customer, and confidence is recalibrated against them. Screening dispositions and customs queries stay with the records they concern.

Runs automatically

Extraction, cross-document checks, HS drafts and duty arithmetic
Screening runs, and re-screening when a list changes
Free-time countdown and alerts, and ETA updates on the customer portal
Audit ledger entries, tenant scoping and money handling

Always waits for a named person

Every HS code on a declaration (licensed customs broker)
Every screening hit (compliance officer)
Every filing, done by the licensed broker in the customs system
Every recovery claim (claim approver, who cannot be the preparer)
Every pickup or yard re-sequence handed to TransNest (operations planner)

Business value

What it helps you work toward, and how we measure it

We agree the baseline with you in writing before a pilot starts. These are the outcomes we measure.

Fewer amendments, holds and penalties

Fields cross-checked and classification reasoning recorded before the broker files.

Amendments, holds and penalties per 100 declarations, against the broker's own record for a comparable period.

Less re-keying

Data read once from the documents and carried through to the declaration.

Fields keyed by hand per declaration, and time from documents complete to ready for filing.

Demurrage seen coming

Free time counted from the documents, with alerts ahead of the last free day.

Containers charged demurrage, and days charged, per month.

Screening with evidence

Every party screened, every hit decided by a named person.

Share of shipments with a recorded screening result and disposition.

Refunds claimed (India)

Drawback and RoDTEP claims assembled from shipping bills, with evidence checked first.

Value claimed and credited, against eligible value in the same shipping bills.

Illustrative example

An import valued at AED 367,250 CIF carries 5% duty (AED 18,362.50) and 5% VAT on CIF plus duty (AED 19,280.63). The importer is registered for VAT, so the VAT is accounted under the reverse charge in its VAT return and the cash due at clearance is the duty. Three of four lines get a draft HS code; the fourth abstains between two headings. Both carry the same rate here, so the broker's decision is about compliance, and the supplier's datasheet settles it inside the free-time window. Rates are illustrative.

Enterprise readiness

Integration, control and deployment

ERP & system integration

Read-first connectors to forwarding systems and ERPs such as SAP, Oracle and Tally, or spreadsheet exports, and declaration layouts for Mirsal 2 (Dubai Customs) and ICEGATE (India). Connectors are configured per deployment. Filing stays with the broker, under their own broker code and customs-system access.

Data sources & connectivity

Single schema with row-level security forced on every table from the first migration, enforced by a test. Content-addressed, versioned document store with retention rules.

Deployment & implementation

Hosted in-region, in the UAE or India, as containerized services, so trade records stay in the region whose customs they serve.

Configuration & business rules

Corridor packs (tariff, rules, document types, declaration layout) plug in per country, starting with the UAE and India. Free-time terms, confidence thresholds, screening lists and approval rules are set per customer.

Roles, access & approvals

Six roles with segregation of duties: customs broker, compliance officer, content curator, claim approver, analyst and admin.

Security, governance & audit

Signed-token authentication, PII masked before any AI call (fails closed), an AI cost governor, a license gate that blocks AGPL and SSPL dependencies, and a tested per-tenant backup and restore.

Human oversight & exceptions

"Prepared, never filed" is enforced by the data model. HS codes, screening hits and recovery claims each wait for a named role, with dual sign-off where a customer requires it, and every change goes into a hash-chained audit ledger.

Scale & ongoing optimization

Reading, classification and screening run as background jobs, sized per deployment to your declaration volume. Tariff and ruling content is maintained per corridor by a content curator.

Straight answers

Questions about Tradix

Something else? Ask a specialist.

Will Tradix file declarations for us?

No. Filing stays with a licensed broker under their own code. The data model has no "submitted" state; it can only record that a licensed person filed.

Which countries does Tradix cover?

Two corridor packs: the UAE, with Mirsal 2, the GCC common external tariff, Arabic documents and free zones; and India, with ICEGATE and duty drawback and RoDTEP recovery. Each pack holds the tariff, rules and document types for its country, and further corridors are added as packs.

What happens when the AI is not sure of an HS code?

It abstains. The line goes to the broker with the candidate headings and the reasoning, instead of a guess. Duty is computed by rules, never by the model.

How is import VAT handled in the UAE?

Tradix computes 5% VAT on the customs value plus duty, and excise where it applies. A VAT-registered importer whose customs code is linked to its tax registration number accounts for that VAT under the reverse charge in its VAT return; an unregistered importer pays it at clearance. The declaration package shows which applies.

What do you need from us to start?

A set of recent shipment files: the documents, the declarations as filed and the broker's HS decisions. Tradix starts read-only beside your forwarding system, so its drafts are compared with what your brokers actually filed before anyone relies on them.

Next step

Discuss your customs and trade compliance challenge

In customs, one wrong digit costs a hold, a penalty or a week of demurrage. Tradix does the reading, matching and arithmetic, and the licensed person does the judging, with a record of both.

Talk to a specialist

Customs brokers and freight forwarders in the UAE and GCC, and exporters and importers in India with their own EXIM teams.

In the same loop