Cross-Border Customs Compliance Service

01 — Challenge

Under EU pre-arrival security rules, cross-border transit parcels need a customs clearance status before they can continue their journey. Customs can take up to two hours to complete its security check, and a parcel that isn't tracked correctly through that window either gets pulled from the line manually or risks moving without clearance. There was no automated way to determine which parcels were even subject to the rule, let alone track them through the compliance window.

02 — Approach

Built an event-driven service on AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, EventBridge, SQS) that ingests pre-departure shipment messages, applies the eligibility rules — origin, destination, transport mode — to flag which parcels fall under the regulation, and schedules a status check exactly at the end of the customs security window. Each parcel's compliance state is tracked through acknowledgement, clearance, rework and hold statuses, with the outcome routed back into the carrier's sorting system automatically.

03 — Result

Cross-border parcels are tracked through the full compliance window without manual intervention, and parcels needing rework or a customs hold get flagged automatically instead of being discovered on the sorting floor.