Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. (EXPD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

We'll wait another minute. So I still see a lot of people filing in. I just want to make sure everyone gets a chance before we start. All right. The numbers have started to slow down. So I think it's time we get started. Hello, everyone. My name is Justin, and I will be the host for today's webinar, our third webinar in our current webinar series call to action. Before we get into it, I want to cover a few ground rules. [Operator Instructions] Later today, all of you that are attending this webinar will receive a follow-up e-mail that includes a survey. Filling out this survey, we'll give you access to the copy of the slides used today. There will also be an additional e-mail next week that one of our speakers will address shortly. And I'm the top back of our speakers, it's time I handed over to one of our speakers for today, Steve Bunda.

Great. Thank you, Justin, and good afternoon and good morning to our friends in the West Coast, to everyone, and thank you for taking time today and attending our ongoing CARM webinar series. And in today's session, we'll be going over the current program from the registration on the CARM Client portal, to where we are today with CBSA's R2, Release 2, implementation plan. We'll also be addressing the upcoming changes and functionalities of Release 2 scheduled for implementation on May 13. My name is Steve Bunda, and I'm responsible for the business development for the customs product here at Expeditors Canada. And we've been working with many importers and the CBSA for months. Well, actually for years on the program and have identified specific areas of concern, and by addressing these concerns, we are hoping to understand and alleviate some of the challenges. So with me today are my colleagues, Bibi Saiphoo, Regional Customs Support Manager; and David Mitchell, Customer Technology Solutions Manager, and together, we will help navigate through this process. And also, Justin Pavao, our sales operation coordinator will be assisting with the presentation. So just a couple of additional details to be sent out attendees of this webinar. The presentation package, including the webinar recording and slide deck will be sent out, and we're also going to include our CARM checklist. In the CARM check -- CARM registration checklist essentially assures you have your company details available when registering for the CARM client portal. And lastly, most recent CBSA's CARM R2 presentation will also be included on the mail out after the presentation. Okay? Thanks, Justin. Okay. So an update for 2024, a CARM update, basically a high-level view for those of you who are not or I should say still not familiar with the CARM program. The project itself is CBSA's multiyear initiative. That's supposed to modernize and streamline the collection of the duties and taxes for the goods imported into Canada. And for our friends south then colleagues south of the border, CARM has many similarities to the ACE program in the U.S. with U.S. CBP. So as an importer, you must be registered on the CARM client portal and ensure you have the necessary bond requirements, surety bond requirements in place. And importers will need to register on the CARM client portal, if you have not, as soon as possible. If you don't, you risk having your shipments held at the border. The rollout data itself is confirmed by CBSA, May 13 of this year. CBSA also confirmed their blackout period between April 26 and May 13. And this is when CBSA will be transitioning from the existing CCS, customs commercial system to the new CARM platform, and the CARM client portal will not be accessible during this period. So from statistically speaking, as of today, we have just over 46,000 registered importers of record on the CARM client portal. So I would expect a substantial increase in the enrollment on the CARM client portal. Given that in 2022, Stats Canada confirmed approximately 160,000 active importers into Canada. So really based on these findings, one could expect potential delays with the flow of goods into Canada. So a quick overview of -- a quick overview of the key changes in R2 we'll be addressing today is: number one, the addition -- the introduction of the CAD, commercial accounting document, the new customs B3 entry form and the B2 adjustment form and Dave Mitchell will go into further details on the CAD. Release 2 will support a new harmonized billing cycle and requirement for an RPP, released prior to payment on, and my colleague Bibi will outline these new changes, including the 180-day bond transition period provided by Canada Border Services Agency. So Justin, I think it's time for a poll question. All right. First question. Registration delegation, have you registered on the CARM client portal and delegated authority to your customs broker?

Okay. Well, with that, hopefully, the 36% that have not registered or delegated authority will learn how to do so in this webinar. Those of you who have registered and delegated authority, you are ahead, as we'll talk about later and as Steve mentioned, there are also some bond requirements to start to get in place, but the most important prior to May 13 is to make sure that you are registered and that you have delegated authority. And we'll explain what both those things mean and how to register [indiscernible]. Thank you. So getting started on the portal itself with the CBSA CARM client portal, log in. You go to the log-in page which will be part of the package that we'll send out to you after this. You click on to log into the CARM client portal. There are -- that will bring you to a page that basically allows you to go into 2 different log-in access types, one of them being the GCKey, which Government of Canada key allows you to get in, have a recurring key to get into the system. And then the other one is with their other partners. So things like banks and things of that nature that you might have a connection to that the CBSA allows to connect into their systems with. We do see, by far, most people are actually using the GCKey to do that to kind of separate your business in home life, so to speak. Please go ahead, Justin. With that said, as I said, the sign-in partner or the GCKey are both available using the sign-in partner, it is fairly simple. You do click on sign-in partner. It gives you the options for the different Canadian financial institutions and a couple of other partners that the CBSA has within this. That would bring up say, for instance, your bank log-in page, you would put in your account number, your password, and that gives you access into the portal itself and that creates that authentication and connection. The second one, the GCKey, you go through and answer a series of questions, such as e-mail addresses, they're going to ask you some security questions just in case you lose your account or password later, like you reset that, and then that allows you to get into what's called CARM client portal. Once you have that log in, you get into the CARM client portal. From there, you actually reenter a lot of your personal information around your name, e-mail address, things of that nature. And then also the business number that's required to connect to the company that you want to connect to. So whether that's you as an importer or one of your trade partners that will do that. With that said, while you are registering for it, as I said, you do need to have your business number registered -- to register rather, sorry, and you need to have your log in and create your personal profile. Once that happens, the first person within the organization that goes in and logs into the CARM client portal will become what's called the business account manager. We'll talk about the different kinds of accounts that are available within the portal itself. But the business account manager is kind of the entity that sits over top of the portal, so that as an organization, they can allow their users to connect the organization within the portal. They can assign different rights to users. And as I think we'll probably repeat in a couple of minutes, it is very important that if you have a business account manager log-in to the portal that you give a second or third access within your organization who are also the business account managers. We have seen where someone has left an organization, forgot their password, things of that nature who are the sole business account manager and that kind of freezes or locks you out from doing anything within the portal as far as letting other users in or granting authority to other organizations. With that said, the business account manager is going to require the 15-digit business number, along with, of course, the first 9 legal entity and physical address as registered with the CBSA. So that is important to find out, make sure that you have the proper name and address that has been registered with the CBSA. And then they ask you 3 affinity questions. And the affinity questions are the total duty and tax for one of your most recent importations or month of importations. The amount of your last payment to the CBSA and your last statement account balance. We will have, as Steve said, a registration checklist at the end of this that will be sent out. And with that registration checklist, all of this information will be on that so that you can get those details prior to trying to sign-in to the portal. It does sign you out after a certain amount of time, and things of that nature. So you want to have that information on hand and then go and do it. And of course, we will have some resources that you can reach out to with an Expeditors, if you are an importer that works with us for brokers today, who will be able to help you with this information later on as well. So delegation of authority. We kind of talked very briefly about that. And what that means is as an importer, you have to identify organizations that are going to be working with you on your behalf within the portal. As a customs broker, Expeditors is going to be using the API and EDI connections with Canada customs. We won't be going into the portal and typing entries and things of that nature, of course, just due to the size of our customers and our business. From that perspective, if we do not have delegation of authority to act on your behalf, then we will not be able to transmit the CAD information to Canada customs when CARM goes live. So you do need to make sure that, that is set up ahead of time. And then really from that perspective, once the first person has registered within your organization, and they are the business account manager, as other individuals come into the organization, they're able to associate different roles within that. So your employees, customs brokers, things of that nature, you can go in and associate, as I said, other users as business account managers. And again, very important to have 2 or 3 of those within your organization just in case of any changes, a program account manager. And really, what that is, is that gives someone access to a certain RM account. So a certain business division registered as an RM entity with Canada customs. So if you have different divisions and let's say, you have different compliance people or different customs brokers that handle different RM accounts, you can associate them to that level by providing them the program account manager access. And then, of course, reader or editor access. So if you don't want somebody applying for programs or doing different things within your CARM client portal setup, then you would just provide reader and editor access, they can go in and see information, maybe somebody in accounts payable or something to that effect. They can go see your statement of account, they can see some of the transaction history, but they can't go in [ delete it ] or add it to [indiscernible]. And just based on the registration, we will send out this link. But Canada customs has done a fantastic job of setting up a little 1- to 5-minute videos on each one of these steps. Of course, we are here to help as well. And as I said, we will give you some resources towards the end of the presentation to reach out to within Expeditors. But as you can see within this screenshot, it will tell you what the statuses are within the CARM client portal, how to look at your duties and taxes, how to register, how to give authority to different organizations and users within the portal itself. So quite a good job with them doing this video library.

Good afternoon, everyone. I will go over the financial security requirements under CARM. RPP. RPP stands for release prior to payment, and allows for the release of goods from CBSA before the payment of duties and taxes. In order to join the RPP program, financial security is mandatory. Financial security is simply a guarantee against importer debt, and importer debt being duties or taxes owed to CBSA. So having financial security in place puts the liability of duty and tax payments onto the importer of record where it belongs. There are two types of financial security. One is to post a surety bond and two is the post actual cash directly with CBSA. Posting a surety bond is the most commonly used type of financial security. And in obtaining a surety bond, you are pretty much buying coverage for a set amount and paying a yearly premium to do so, a bit like buying insurance, I would say. For example, to secure a $10,000 bond, you're not actually expected to pay $10,000. You are paying a yearly premium for $10,000 worth of monthly coverage. Past importing data is used to determine your required bond amount. If you are a new importer and have no historical importing data, you're allowed to self-assess using the information you have to make that determination. Today, your bond amount represents the average amount of duties and taxes you pay in a month. In CARM Release 2, your bond amount will be 50% of the highest monthly duties and taxes paid over a 12-month period. And the minimum required bond amount will be $25,000. The time line to secure a bond is currently around 8 weeks. And the CBSA approval piece takes up the majority of that time. The second type of financial security is the post cash directly with CBSA. In this option, you are actually posting cash with CBSA to secure the release of your goods. And the cash posted will remain on file with CBSA as long as you're involved in importing activities and require financial security coverage. Before I move on to the next slide, we have a poll for you. What financial security option will you be using? Wow, that is very, very much in line with the norm. A surety bond is an easier process to establish, both cost-wise and also to manage in the long run. My colleague, Steve mentioned earlier, the CBSA 180 days transition period. As long as importers are registered on the CARM portal, they are able to take advantage of the 180-day transition period. 180 days sounds, might sound like a long time, but it really isn't. It's critical that you use this time to take action and focus on getting your financial security in place as soon as possible so that there is no risk of any disruption to your supply chain once the 180 days expire. Next slide, please. Retrieving your statement of account from the CARM portal. In today's world it's typical for customs brokers to send a statement of accounts to importers. In the CARM world, statement of account is a self-service option and can be retrieved directly and timely from the portal with little effort. Once you are locked into the portal right from the home page, the first thing to do is to make sure you are viewing the right account by viewing your -- by verifying your company's business number and RM account number at the top right of the page, as indicated on the screenshot here. Then simply click on the financial information link, which will lead you to your statement of account. Your statement of account is available in PDF format. Also on this page, please take note of the transaction history link. Next slide, please, Justin. Your statement of account -- sorry, the transaction history link is an important one to note, as this is where you will be able to export your statement of account details in a workable XLS format. Next slide please, Justin. Right. Here we go. And additionally, through the transaction history link, you will find the option to make credit card payments in the portal. And speaking of making payments, aside from credit card, there is one other available payment option in the portal, and that is PAD, preauthorized debit. This is the payment option where CBSA will automatically debit your bank account for the exact amount of your statement of account on the warning of payment due date. Signing up for PAD, preauthorized debit, in the portal is simple and straightforward and can be done within 24 to 48 hours. The PAD agreement is located in the main menu under the payments tab, as you can see on the second screenshot in our slide.

So, hey, Bibi, I just want to go back to this PAD here, the preauthorized debit. I know in the U.S., many of our colleagues and friends state side are familiar with the ACH program in the U.S. So PAD is essentially Canada's version of ACH, where they're going to pull the funds from the account.

Correct, Steve, that's absolutely right.

Yes. Okay.

Yes. So next slide, please, Justin. In addition to making payments in the CARM portal, you were also able to remit payments to CBSA via online banking through an approved CBSA bank or financial institution. And here is a listing of some of the CBSA approved financial institutions. And lastly, on payments, I would like to clarify that making payments to CBSA in the CARM portal is not mandatory. If you are successfully making payments to CBSA today via a method outside of the CARM portal, you can continue doing so even after CARM Release 2 is implemented.

So, okay, Bibi, hold on. I got a question here. And this is probably one of the common questions that I've been receiving from clients in the U.S., particularly our nonresident importers. What if their financial institution is not 1 of these 12 that are noted here. What do we do?

In that case, you're still encouraged to reach out to your bank as they will likely have an affiliation with one of the CBSA approved banks.

Okay. Okay. So I guess this electronic payment is -- at this time, the most common and probably the simplest I would say, as simple as paying your utilities bill or a credit card online, right?

It is a very simple, straightforward process to pay using on your bank's portal.

Okay. Great. Thanks, Bibi.

All right. Next slide, please. Billing and payment cycles. CARM Release 2 introduces new billing cycles and payment due dates. The current billing cycle is from the 25th of 1 month to the 24th of the following month. And the current payment due date is typically the last business day of the month. So this is an example of the current billing cycle for the month of July, shown here in the gray area from June 25th to July 24th. The statement cuts off on the 24th. The final statement is issued by CBSA on the 25th, and the payment is due on the 31st. So now let's look a look -- take a look at the new billing cycle. Next slide. Here, you see an example of the new billing cycle for the month of July, shown in the gray area from June 18th to July 17th. So in CARM Release 2, the statement will cut off on the 17th, the final statement will still be issued by CBSA on the 25th, but the new payment due date is 10 week days after the 17th, and weekdays are defined as Monday to Friday, including Canadian holidays. So in this scenario, the payment due date works out to be July 31st same as with the current billing cycle. And in comparing the number of days in the 2 cycles, current and new, they both contain the same amount of days, 30. However, there are 2 important points to know with the new billing cycle. It comes with an allowable correction period, where entries can be freely corrected without incurring interest fees and any corrections made will be reflected on your final statement for the month. The second point to note is that while your payment due date remains the same with both cycles, your statement of account in CARM cuts off on the 17th of the month instead of on the 24th. This gives you a much lengthier period to review, reconcile and prepare to make your payment to CBSA at month end. So to reiterate the benefits are a correction period where entries can be corrected interest-free before payment is made and more time to review, reconcile and prepare to make your payment to CBSA. Steve, did you have a -- did someone have a question.

Sorry, Bibi, I'm on mute because I was typing away there. Sorry, I do have a question. So the correction period -- we can adjust the entries without the need for a formal post-entry B2 adjustment year, correct?

That is correct. The correction period, if utilized, has the potential to greatly reduce the amount of B2 adjustments required.

Woe, that will be interesting to see in production. I'm looking forward to that. We're going to make a bunch of many adjustments or anything correction. But that facility, I guess, it's similar to the U.S. CBP entry versioning, I would say.

That's right. In CARM Release 2, Canadian -- or entries will now house various versions if need be.

So after the closing on the 31st, we're looking at an adjustment where there would be some sort of formal post entry at that point, right?

Exactly. Exactly. So you have to correct and go through the process to receive your refund if it's after the payment date.

Right. Okay. Good. Thank you.

So last slide.

While we're still here. There's just one question. So the question is from Karen, if I understand it correctly, there are 2 options to pay either credit card or add no wire or EFT. So could you clarify that, please? What the options to pay are?

Absolutely. Within the CARM client portal, there are two options. Credit card and PAD, preauthorized debit. Outside of the portal, its online banking through your bank, or there's a final option to pay via EDI, but it's not a viable -- EDI is not a viable option for just an average company to pay the setup that's involved with EDI payments to CBSA, it's huge. Did I answer the question?

Thank you, Bibi.

And I think I have one last slide. I wanted to reiterate something that David touched on earlier. Right. So delegation of authority and power of attorney. Customs brokers today have written power of attorney/general agency agreement from their customers in order to act on their behalf. And similarly, in CARM, importers must provide delegation of authority in the portal to their customs broker in order for them to act on their behalf. So to reiterate, delegation of authority is mandatory and required in addition to power of attorney and general agency agreement. Also, it must be done to complete the registration process in the portal. So registering and delegation, both of those things are required to complete your registration. Thank you, everyone, and I'm going to turn it back over to my colleague, Dave now.

Hey, Bibi. We do have a question, and I'm pretty sure you can answer this one because I think I've asked you this question before more than once or twice. The question is, how do you get the SoA, statement of account in Excel format?

There is a -- through the transaction history link in the portal there is at the bottom left-hand bottom left-hand of the page, you will see a little button that says export data. So again, remember, there were 2 links. The -- 1 was the transaction history where you can -- through that link, you can make credit card payments and you can export your data in a workable Excel format.

All right. Great.

Just go back one, Justin, if you could. No, okay, online. So I just wanted to talk to you guys about the different accounting types and how they are changing within the CARM program. And this is whether you're sending EDI, whether you're going on the portal, I do apologize, Justin, please go forward. And so in today's world, what happens is your customs broker or if you show up to the border or yourselves as an importer or filing what's called a B3 customs declaration. The B3 customs declaration is a document that can be transmitted over EDI and it can be submitted paper to the CBSA today. Duties and taxes are calculated by the trade chain partner that's responsible for filling it out and then validated by the CBSA. A little bit of a difference going forward in CARM. So with the B3, we're now going to be sending in what's called a commercial accounting declaration. And with that, the B3 is corrected by what's called a B2. They did get those numbers backwards, of course. But really from that perspective, the correction of the B2 is a completely manual document that is sent into the CBSA for review with whatever backup you have. Within the process of the commercial accounting declaration in CARM, what you'll be able to do is send in versions of this commercial accounting declaration. So there will be a time where post release, you will be required to go in and confirm the entry. So that's through the CAD. And then you have a period of approximately 10 business days where you can make changes to that CAD and go through and correct anything that may be wrong. Then after that period, you can go in and make adjustments to the CAD. So the nice thing about this process that customs has gone through with is the adjustment process actually just becomes versions of the same document instead of having totally separate documents for your initial accounting, and then any changes to it, you will be able to see the flow of all of that documentation from time of release through to payment and then any post-entry adjustments that are required after that. So the paper adjustments are no longer required, those to be electronic. The B2 process, which today takes -- we have here 6-plus months. Really depending on the change, it could be 1.5 years or 2, depending on when customs can get to those B2s and adjustments. Sometimes you will need to communicate with the officer whether that be over the phone, e-mail, whatever the case may be. But within the CARM client portal, there will actually be communication back and forth available with the CBSA, so that you can upload supporting documents were required to get adjustments finalized. And then really you don't -- you won't need to call and check the status of any of the changes. That status will actually happen within the portal itself. So you'll always know where any kind of adjustments or changes are to that customs account or commercial accounting document through in the entire process. You'll see the status below the document itself when you click into more of the detail. So Steve is on mute, I'll go through this. We do have some, some...

Thank you, Dave.

Go ahead, Steve.

Thanks. So folks, if you require any further additional assistance or support on the program itself, don't hesitate to reach out to myself, Dave or Bibi, we'd be happy to help you out. And also on the slide here, it's a list of our branches across Canada, and identifying our customs brokerage managers and all of our managers are well versed with the CARM program. And again, please don't hesitate to reach out to those folks. Also, CBSA has actually, as Dave mentioned, CBSA has really stepped up their outreach program, and I would encourage you to reach out to the customs to the support -- CARM support help desk as they've been quite helpful with answering our questions. So again, if you have questions, please enter them into the Q&A box here. And we have a fair bit of questions to address here. And we'll try to get through them right now. We've got -- still got some time until [ 12:30 ]. So there are a few questions here. And any others by all means, please enter it into the Q&A box.

Steve, one of the first questions here. I think I can go through. So, Michael asks, how can I complete the 3 affinity questions if I've never directly paid Canada customs. My broker is always paid and then invoice me. So you can reach out if Expeditors is your customs broker reach out to one of those contacts that we had on that last slide. The one that you deal with within our organization, and they will be able to help you with the proper answers for those affinity questions. If you are using another broker, you would have to reach out an [ asset ] broker the same questions. So hopefully, that was the rest of that. Bibi, Patricia is asking, will there be a list of approved surety companies from which to purchase a surety bond.

There is. There is already a link for that. We can send it out with our presentation.

We'll link with that, with the wrap up that we send out after. Thank you. Bibi, a lot of these...

You could -- you could just use us to do that.

There you go. So Bibi, so a lot of these in a row are going to be used. So is Citibank an approved bank or preauthorized debit?

Sorry, I missed the first part of the question.

Is Citibank an approved bank for preauthorized debit?

Yes, it is. It's on the list.

All right. From Karen, if I understand correctly, there are two options to pay. I think we answered this one, I didn't click down. Credit card or PAD, no wire ETF, Bibi clarified that you can make a payment through your bank or EDI. And those two options are outside of the portal, but can be completed.

No wire payments to CBSA.

Thank you. Will CBSA allow cheques to be mailed to them?

For the meantime, yes, they said they would keep that for a bit, but I imagine that, that will be eliminated for sure at some point.

I've got one question here, Dave. If we use a company like Expeditors or DSV, do we need to register on CARM? Well, I'll make it a two-part question. One, yes, if you're an importer of record, be it resident or nonresident, you need to register on CARM. And two, you don't need two brokers. It's easier with one, right? So we'd be happy to look after your brokerage needs. I had to throw the plug in there, guys.

Okay. Thanks, Steve. So from that perspective, an anonymous person has sent in, how do we -- how are we getting our bills? Do we need to log-in into the portal and retrieve the invoices every month? Who wants to hit that?

Yes. Invoices will come from your customs brokers, along with their -- with your supporting documents and your service fees. If you're talking statement of account with your duties and taxes, the importer is the intended recipient of that document, and it will be available in the current portal.

Great. Got another question here. If a U.S.-based company exports to Canada DDP via UPS Parcel Service and the applicable duties and taxes paid from the U.S. shippers UPS account, does the USA-based company still need to register for CARM? And the answer to that is absolutely yes. All importers, whether you're a nonresident importer or resident importer must be registered on the portal, and you must give delegation of authority to anyone trading on your behalf that will be submitting any of the customs entries or changes and you will have visibility to the actual statement or you can pay cash through the portal itself for your entries, depending, of course, on how many is really the break point, whether you would do that or not. Okay. And then I've got -- I believe someone mentioned 180-day transition period for RPP bond on file with CBSA. If so, when does this time frame begin? Bibi, maybe I'll let you finish this one. But I think if -- I think it's important to note to be able to take advantage of the 180-day period, you must be registered on the CARM portal prior to that April 26th. Quite honestly, I would say, get in, get registered on the portal within the next week or 2, play around with it, see what's in there. The CBSA is also doing webinars. We will likely have some follow-up webinars after this prior to the May standpoint, just to kind of go over the changes. But quite honestly, just get in, get used to it, get your users set up, and you'll have that availability for that 180-day period. One of the questions I want to do on the back end of that, Bibi, is just for you to reiterate how long are bonds taken currently with Canada customs to finalize?

The bonds are taking approximately 8 weeks right now to finalize with Canada customs. So the question was, when does the 180-day grace period begins, transition period, rather? It begins on May 14th. And CBSA from attending a lot of seminars with them, they're going to be very swift about when that 180 days expire, they're going to untick that box in the portal and it's done. That is it. So it begins immediately on May 14th, and it will expire for sure, within what is that? 6 months? Yes, 6 months.

Yes, roughly 6.

So there's a another question... sorry.

Sure. Go ahead. Go ahead.

So there's a another question here from Bonnie, which is I believe a broker can still pay CBSA on our behalf. I suspect they will charge a fee to do so, but is it possible? So you must have a bond in place with the CBSA, period. A broker may choose to facilitate payment on behalf of an importer. However, the bond must be in place. The brokerage bond is going to be a thing in the past.

And Bonnie is right. Customs brokers are going to charge a fee to facilitate the payment.

Question on the -- what is the name used for paying CBSA in the online banking service, I could not find it on my online bank?

It's Canada Border Services Agency. We have a document that listed out with all the various methods of payment. I think I will send that to Justin to include as well.

Thank you, Bibi.

Bibi, on that, you -- if we're going to choose the online payment option, we would just add CBSA as a payee on your account, correct?

Just like you said before, how we pay a bill, how you go online and on your bank's portal and you add whoever your [ Visa bill ] company or something, yes, very simple. But we have it all outlined in a document, and I'll give that -- provide that to Justin.

Perfect. Perfect.

Bibi, do you know any reasons why a preauthorized debit would be reduced from the CBSA. The funds were available in the account. However, and the PAD was accepted and registered, but it got rejected. The person who sent that, and said that they've sent it to the CARM group to investigate, but...

Yes. There could be a myriad of reasons, but I've seen a couple of reasons. One was the limit on the PAD agreement was not set to an appropriate limit. I've seen a payment be rejected because of that. And the funding has to be in there the day before because PAD runs at like 06:00 a.m. on the payment due date. So those are the two actual rejections that I've experienced. But it's a good thing to send it to the CARM team to investigate, of course.

Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. Is there a max amount to send payment through the portal? So I think you mentioned this, but if you can just reiterate it, other Steve or...

Unfortunately, the credit card max is $5,000, which is not workable for most companies. I've talked to the CBSA recently about that, and there's no work in place to have that increase. And unfortunately, it has to do with payment fees. When you use a credit card, there's payment -- the service -- the person accepting the payment is paying service fees to the credit card company. So CBSA is not going to increase that $5,000 limit. Do you want to know the limit for the other option? I think it's -- it's up to you. It's up to you in your bank, and it goes up to $900 million or something. It's a huge amount. It's unlimited pretty much.

So, Bibi, I guess the credit card game, it would be more or less smaller or onetime importers coming into Canada. Not -- I wouldn't think a regular commercial importer like we deal with today would be going that route with credit card, right?

No, no, $5,000 is just not a lot of money. And yes, it's not workable for most companies. Unfortunately, I saw an importer make multiple payments to get through their $16,000 that they owed. And it's not an acceptable thing. CBSA didn't like that when I mentioned that happened. So credit card is just not the way to do it. PAD is, some companies like that when it gets taken out automatically. And if not, you can push the payment through your bank through online banking.

That's really the option that we're seeing most people take on is the online banking. That's true.

Absolutely. People -- most companies that we deal with do that.

I've got one here. So what if I have more than one broker. I think Steve said earlier, you can just consolidate that to Expeditors. But kidding aside, they have delegated authority to Expeditors but they do not see their other brokers. So that was part one. And then part two, and Bibi I'm going to hit this, currently Expeditors e-mails a statement for payment. How do I retrieve this from the portal?

Yes. The statement through the financial information link and the -- financial information link will lead you to a statement of account, but it will be a PDF document. There is a function in the portal through the transaction history link that will allow you to export it in an Excel format. But the CBSA is only going to provide you with financial data. They're not going to provide you with HS codes and value for duties. They're just pushing to you a bill, an invoice that shows duties, taxes, brokerage and dates and referencing it back to a transaction number.

And then Under the accounts tab, to get back to delegation of authority piece, under the accounts tab. If you can't find a partner or you can't find add, you can also ask your customs broker to send a request for delegation of authority, and then that makes the approval process a little bit quicker and easier because it will be in the portal waiting for your response.

Right. You should ask.

We've got a ton of questions that have come in here. We'll take about 5 more minutes of them and then kind of wrap up. So -- how does a PAD method of payment work with the portal? Bibi?

It's a simple agreement to complete, and you agree to terms and that we all agree to. And you're entering, basically your banks -- your bank account number, your transit number, just very basic fundamental information. So it's a simple thing, and it can be done within 24 hours. You're just adding your -- going into the agreement, agreeing to the terms and adding your payment details. And you're setting a limit, you're setting an effective date, just things like that.

So we've got another question here. Will the portal include supplier invoices and backing list? No, it will not. So the portal is going to include the transaction history of the customs accounting documents -- sorry, commercial accounting documents and any kind of changes or things that have gone on within the business directly within Canada's CBSA system, rather sorry.

And Dave, CARM really doesn't impact the existing release functions that are available by customs today. It's back in accounting requirements.

Sure. So do I need to be a BAM to give access to brokers, so delegate authority? So you need to be either a business account manager or a program account manager for the particular RM extension to be able to delegate authority. Sorry, we created a bond -- we had our bond created with the assistance of Expeditors recently. Thank you. Is the bond still in place for CARM? Or do we need to create a new one with CBSA?

The bond -- the existing bonds will be transitioned to the CARM portal automatically. So you don't need a new one.

It's going to hit again, Bibi, is there a release of goods bond sufficient for the RPP? Or is there a different bond type needed?

That is the bond required. A D120 release a goods bond.

Will the CARM portal ever provide B2 transaction data or will we always rely on the broker for that? So from a historical standpoint, the B2 transactions can be queried. So the latest transaction amount can be queried from the portal. I don't think that they will be showing the B2 transactions in the transaction history itself because it is more of a manual process. So you can go back to your broker to get copies or any other entity that's filed adjustments on your behalf. However, any of the customs accounting declarations, commercial accounting declarations that are transmitted in going forward after May 13th, you will see the adjustment in the most recent version within the portal itself. So you'll always have access to the versions that were previously transmitted and going forward. So again, a B2 is just going to be a version of a commercial accounting document. There is a question if we could give a more macro generalized process of CARM? The most macro is post release, you yourselves or your customs brokers are going to be submitting a commercial accounting document instead of a B3. That will dictate the duties and taxes owing to the customs authority. From there you can make changes or adjustments to that customs accounting document. Within the payment period that Bibi said, all of those customs accounting documents will be added up and will be on a statement of account for the end of the month. So you can go into your portal, take a look at the statement of account and see the balances owing to the CBSA. I hope that, that wasn't too high level, but again, if you'd like to reach out, we'd be happy to go through this with you. I think we're going to respond to the rest of the questions that are in the chat either after in the e-mail or please feel free to reach out to us directly. And over to you, Justin.

Yes, I know, Steve, you want to make a few remarks. So I will let you go ahead and do that now.

Yes. Thanks, Justin, and thanks, Dave and Bibi. Yes, just a few closing remarks and I just want to reiterate that it is important for all importers, residents or nonresident importers to register on to the CARM client portal as soon as possible. The CARM program, it's a mandatory requirement. And the requirement is going to be rolled out -- the final R2 release 2 is May 13th, and it's just around the corner. So if you have not registered, you need to get on to the portal and register now. Important to note though, CBSA has promised to have their transition outlined by March. And at this time, we will have another webinar to address their plan or will provide these details to our marketing channels. Thank you.

Thanks, Steve. And just to wrap it up, I want to talk on those marketing channels. So here on this slide, you have the opportunity to scan the QR code shown here. There will also be the opportunity if you want to click a link instead on our follow-up e-mails. We have a nice easy link in our e-mail signature. So you can click. Go to the subscription page. And then once you fill your information there, you will be receiving market updates, insights, newsletters, and of course, the invites to future webinars as well. Lastly, as mentioned before, earlier on the webinar, please keep an out for a couple of e-mails coming your way. First, a survey e-mail that will grant access to the slide deck will be coming out today. And second, a follow-up e-mail sometime next week will contain the useful materials mentioned earlier throughout the webinar as well. So that is all we have for today. Thank you all very much for joining. Please don't forget, you can reach out to the Expeditors contacts shown a couple of slides ago or your local Expeditors representatives with any questions that you may have. And with that, we will wrap it up there. So please have a great rest of your day.

Thank you.

Thank you.