Automating Bill of Entry & Shipping Bill Data Extraction with Email Integration

Every importer and exporter operating in India knows the drill: Bills of Entry and Shipping Bills, filed as required by Indian customs, are dense documents packed with over 300+ data fields spanning four distinct sections, header data, invoice data, line-item data, and licensing data. That data has to be extracted, line-item by line-item, to reconcile accounts, maintain import registers, calculate duties, generate e-Way bills, and post accounting entries.

For most companies, this extraction is still done manually, by internal teams or by appointed Custom House Agents (CHAs). It's slow, resource-intensive, and prone to human error. Compounding the difficulty, Bill of Entry and Shipping Bill files arrive in a range of formats depending on the customs office or port authority involved, making manual processing even more fragmented and inconsistent.

Our client in this case study is a major material science engineering company headquartered in southern India, generating over INR 5,000 crore in revenue in FY 2024. With more than 8,000 shipping bill and bill of entry files to process annually, the scale of the challenge was significant, and made worse by a substantial backlog of files from the previous year sitting unprocessed.

The company came to us with a clear ask: they wanted a solution that could be implemented company-wide, required no IT investment, and could go live almost immediately, with minimal manual intervention going forward.

1. 1. Receive

   BOE & Shipping Bill files arrive by email (CHA or ICEGATE).

2. 2. Forward

   Auto-forwarder sends them to the dedicated account.

3. 3. Extract

   Platform reads all attached files and extracts data line by line.

4. 4. Consolidate

   Multiple files are merged into a structured report.

5. 5. Download

   Report available in platform or emailed to designated users.

Our platform supports multiple integration pathways, APIs, sFTP, EDI, and email, alongside a default browser-upload option available to every client. But given this client's specific circumstances, a heavy file backlog, a high ongoing volume, and a strong preference to avoid any IT overhead, email-based integration emerged as the clear fit.

Here's how it works:

• The client receives Bill of Entry and Shipping Bill files via email, either from their CHA or directly from the ICEGATE portal.
• An auto-forwarder rule routes these emails to our solution's dedicated account ID.
• Our platform automatically reads incoming emails and downloads every shipping bill and bill of entry file attached, even when a single email contains multiple files.
• Data is extracted line-item wise and compiled into a detailed, consolidated output report.

Rather than leaving the client to sift through hundreds of separate files, our solution merges the extracted data into a single report, with the client controlling exactly how many files get merged into one worksheet. Reports can be downloaded directly from the platform's UI or emailed straight to designated users.

No new infrastructure. No IT project. Just an inbox rule, and the rest is automated.

The results spoke for themselves, and quickly:

Beyond the numbers, the shift in day-to-day experience mattered just as much: a process that once demanded constant manual attention now runs quietly in the background, freeing the client's tax and customs teams to focus on higher-value work.

This engagement continues to evolve. Our support team remains engaged with the client on an ongoing basis, and the platform itself keeps expanding, with new features added continuously. Clients also have the option to customize their output report format to match evolving internal requirements.

Looking ahead, the solution can be integrated directly with SAP and Oracle ERP systems, enabling extracted data to be parked directly within the ERP and accounting entries to be posted automatically, closing the loop from customs filing to books of account.