Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

DocUnlock is an AI-powered entry-writing automation platform for licensed customs brokers and freight forwarders. It ingests the documents your clients already send — commercial invoices, packing lists, bills of lading, certificates of origin, health certs — and produces validated, filing-ready entries (CBP Form 7501, 7512 In-bond, ISF, Pedimentos, and PGA filings) that your team reviews and submits through your existing ABI. It sits between your client's inbox and your ABI without changing either side.

Licensed U.S. customs brokers, Mexican agencias aduanales, freight forwarders, and 3PLs handling cross-border entries. We're not a replacement for your license, your CHB, or your ABI — we automate the manual entry-writing in between.

Generic OCR returns raw text. DocUnlock is trained specifically on customs trade documents and produces structured, validated and completed entry filing data mapped to the exact fields your ABI requires — including HTS classification context, PGA flags, party data, and value/quantity reconciliation across CI, PL, and BL.

Your team forwards client emails (with attachments) to a dedicated DocUnlock inbox. Within minutes, DocUnlock parses every attached document, extracts and cross-validates the fields, flags any inconsistencies or missing data, and produces a complete draft entry ready for your reviewer in your ABI.

✔ CBP Form 7501 Entry Summary
✔ CBP Form 7512 In-bond
✔ Importer Security Filing (ISF / 10+2)
✔ Pedimentos (Mexico)
✔ PGA filings (FDA, APHIS, AMS, TTB, EPA, and others)

Commercial Invoices, Packing Lists, Bills of Lading (master and house), Air Waybills, Arrival Notices, Certificates of Origin (including USMCA, CAFTA-DR), Health Certificates, Phytosanitary Certificates, FDA Prior Notice forms, Importer Security Filings, and more. Format-agnostic: PDFs, scans, photos, spreadsheets, and structured data all work.

Yes. Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean, German, and other major trade languages are supported, including mixed-language documents. International units (kg, lb, m³, ft³, etc.) are normalized automatically.

NetCHB (Descartes), OneView (Descartes), CargoWise, RB Systems, IMEXSOL, MAGAYA, and others. If your ABI isn't listed, contact us — odds are we support it.

Depending on the ABI, DocUnlock pushes the completed entry via direct integration, structured file upload, or API. Your entry writer reviews the draft in your ABI and submits to CBP — DocUnlock never files on your behalf.

Yes. DocUnlock is a tool for your entry writers, not a replacement for your license or your supervision obligations. Every entry is reviewed by your team before submission to CBP or aduana. Nothing transmits to CBP without a human in the loop.

No. That's the core design principle. Clients keep emailing your team the way they always have. You just forward those emails to DocUnlock.

On clean, well-formed documents, extraction accuracy exceeds what manual entry writers achieve at speed. More importantly, DocUnlock cross-validates fields across documents (e.g., invoice value vs. packing list weight vs. BL party data) and flags discrepancies before the entry reaches CBP — which is where most real-world errors come from.

DocUnlock flags missing data, conflicting fields, and low-confidence extractions for human review. Your entry writer sees exactly what's flagged and why, with the original document side-by-side. Nothing silently falls through.

You are, the same as today. DocUnlock is a tool that produces a draft for your licensed broker to review and submit. Liability for the filing itself stays with the broker of record. We help you catch errors earlier; we don't take on your filing liability.

DocUnlock extracts and reconciles classification data your clients provide and flags items that need broker classification. We don't auto-classify novel goods without your review — classification remains a licensed-broker decision.

DocUnlock supports the PGAs that account for the vast majority of U.S. import filings, including:
✔ FDA — Food and Drug Administration (food, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, tobacco)
✔ APHIS — Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (plants, animals, animal products, wood packaging)
✔ AMS — Agricultural Marketing Service (produce, dairy, organic certifications)
✔ FSIS — Food Safety and Inspection Service (meat, poultry, egg products)
✔ TTB — Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (alcohol, tobacco)
✔ EPA — Environmental Protection Agency (chemicals, pesticides, vehicles, engines)
✔ FWS — Fish and Wildlife Service (wildlife, wildlife products)
✔ NHTSA — National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (vehicles, equipment)
✔ CPSC — Consumer Product Safety Commission (consumer goods)
✔ DEA — Drug Enforcement Administration (controlled substances)

If a PGA you need isn't listed, contact us — we add agency support based on customer demand.

DocUnlock identifies likely PGA flags based on the HTS code, product description, country of origin, and document content (for example, a health certificate in the attachments is a strong signal for FDA or APHIS). The system surfaces the suggested PGA flags for your entry writer to confirm — final agency determination always sits with your licensed broker.

Yes. DocUnlock extracts and populates FDA Prior Notice data (manufacturer, shipper, FCE/SID, product codes) and the Affirmations of Compliance commonly required for food, drug, device, and cosmetic entries. When required AofC data is missing from the source documents, it's flagged for review rather than guessed.

APHIS core fields — scientific names, country of origin, intended use, permit numbers, and treatment information — are extracted from phytosanitary certificates, permits, and commercial invoices, and validated against APHIS Core requirements before the entry is sent to your ABI.

Yes. Not every PGA flag triggered by an HTS code actually applies to a given shipment — a flag may be disclaimable based on intended use, product form, or quantity. DocUnlock surfaces disclaimable flags with the reasoning and the supporting document evidence, so your entry writer can disclaim with confidence rather than reflexively.

When a PGA flag is active, DocUnlock checks that the required supporting documents are present and that their data reconciles with the entry. For example: an FDA-flagged food entry without a Prior Notice confirmation number, or an APHIS plant entry where the phytosanitary certificate's country of origin doesn't match the BL, gets flagged before it reaches CBP.

Yes. DocUnlock can produce PGA data sets independently of full 7501 entries when needed, and supports the document re-processing required for PGA amendments after initial submission.

Yes, SOC 2 certified. See our security page for full details.

Yes. DocUnlock is built to meet GDPR requirements for customers handling EU personal data — including shipper, consignee, and notify-party information that appears on commercial invoices, bills of lading, and customs documents. We act as a data processor on your behalf, with a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) available for all EU and EU-adjacent customers.

Data is stored in U.S.-based infrastructure with configurable retention. Enterprise customers can set custom retention windows and request data deletion.

EU customer data can be stored and processed in EU-based infrastructure on request. Default storage is U.S.-based with SCCs in place; EU residency is available for enterprise customers and customers with EU data residency requirements.

Yes, we're an NCBFAA member and built specifically for the licensed brokerage community.

No. Your documents and the data extracted from them are never used to train our models. Data is used solely to process your filings.

Data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest (AES-256). Access is role-based and audit-logged.

Most brokerages are live within two weeks. There's no migration of your client base, no change to your ABI, and no change to how your clients send documents.

Pricing is based on filing volume, with custom plans for high-volume brokerages and forwarders.
‍Schedule a demo for a quote tailored to your operation.

Dedicated onboarding, ongoing support via email and Slack for enterprise customers, and direct access to our solutions team during business hours.

Yes. Custom validation rules, document templates, client-specific handling, and ABI-specific integrations are configurable per customer.

Schedule a demo. We'll walk through your current entry-writing workflow, identify the highest-volume document types and clients, and scope a two-week pilot.