Ouli Refund / Guides

Playbook · For brokers

A CAPE desk, at book scale.

CAPE work breaks the usual broker workflow in two places: an accepted declaration cannot be amended, and rejections cluster on line-level mismatches against the original 7501 — HTS code, value or quantity — where a single bad line rejects the entire declaration. Across a book of clients that turns refund work into a reconciliation problem before it is a filing problem, running against per-entry protest clocks that expire independently of each other.

PUBLISHED 2026-08-31 · FIGURES FROM CBP COURT FILINGS AND PUBLIC RECORDS, AS OF JULY 2026

Who may file
The importer of record, or the licensed broker who filed the entry summaries. CBP validates this at the file level before anything else.
Rejection driver
Line-level mismatches against the original 7501. One bad line rejects the whole declaration.
No second chance
An accepted CAPE declaration cannot be withdrawn or amended.
The clocks
180 days from each entry's own liquidation, per entry, across every client EIN.
Billing
Refund work commonly bills at $125–$350 per entry.
Payment
Generally 60–90 days after acceptance, including about 45 days of CBP review — assuming ACH details are enrolled.

Why the work concentrates before submission

In most customs work, the cost of an error is a correction. Here it is a rejected declaration that cannot be resubmitted as an amendment, on entries that may be approaching a protest deadline. The economics push essentially all of the effort to the front: comparing every entry against the 7501 as filed, line by line, before anything is uploaded.

Done by hand that means pulling the original entry summary for each entry and checking HTS, value and quantity across hundreds of clients. It is mechanical, high-volume, and unforgiving — which is the definition of work worth automating and a poor use of licensed time.

The deadline problem at book scale

One importer tracking their own entries has a list. A broker holding a book has a rolling front: entries liquidating continuously across clients, each starting its own 180-day clock, with no shared date to anchor against.

The useful question stops being "what is the deadline" and becomes "which entries across every client EIN lapse in the next two weeks". That is a dashboard question, and it is what a book-level deadline view is for.

What stays with the licence

Nothing in this changes who is responsible. The broker holds the licence, the client relationship and the filing; review and signature are licensed work and stay that way. Software does reconciliation, triage and monitoring, and hands over review-ready output.

Oulution is not a customs brokerage. It does not contact your clients, does not file, and takes no share of your fees — the arrangement described on the broker page.

Where we stand

Software, not legal advice.

This describes the shape of the work, not what to do on any client's entries. Every filing decision, review and signature remains with the licensed broker or attorney of record. Oulution is not a customs brokerage.

Oulution is not a law firm and not a customs brokerage. Nothing on this page is legal, customs or tax advice, and no attorney-client relationship is formed by reading it.

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