Interlink Accelerates Customs Entry Processing Amidst Regulatory Uncertainty

Interlink Trade Services operates in a fast-paced customs brokerage environment where speed and compliance must move together. As tariff requirements evolve and PGA filings (including FDA-related data elements) become more common, Interlink needed a way to increase throughput and consistency without overwhelming its team of entry specialists.

The Problem: Line-by-Line Production Work Limited Scalability

Before Reform, Interlink’s entry process was heavily manual, relying on line-by-line input. Entry specialists keyed shipment data, validated details across multiple documents, applied provisions, and performed repetitive corrections across multi-line entries. More complex filings routinely pushed processing time past an hour.

A significant portion of each day was spent toggling between emails, invoices, packing lists, BOLs, spreadsheets, and ABI screens, cross-checking details to ensure everything matched before submission. That production workload dominated the day and limited the time available for structured auditing, proactive compliance guidance, and client consulting.

The tipping point came as volumes and complexity increased. Interlink needed to scale throughput and maintain consistency without sacrificing compliance standards. The existing workflow simply could not scale efficiently under growing pressure.

The Solution: From Building Entries From Scratch to Reviewing a Structured Draft

Reform enabled Interlink to shift from manual entry building to automated pre-structuring. By ingesting customer emails and full shipment packets, including invoices, packing lists, BOLs, arrival notices, and supporting documentation, Reform reads and extracts line-level details, organizes the data into a clean structured format, and prepares it for final review before transmitting to ABI as an EDI file. Instead of spending an hour typing and reconciling, specialists now begin with a ready-to-review draft. They still own classification decisions, provisions, valuation nuance, and PGA complications, but now Reform removes the repetitive extraction, mapping, and cleanup that previously consumed most of the day.

Carlos, IT Supervisor, recalls the first time he saw it in action: “Within seconds, it pulled all the important details into the portal, organized everything perfectly, and sent the final review straight to our ABI software as an EDI file for automatic entry creation. My first thought was, ‘Wow… this is going to save us so much time. It feels like magic.’”

Karlo, Trade Supervisor, had a similar reaction: “It felt like having an assistant who already understood entry writing and compliance requirements. Instead of digging through multiple documents and cross-checking details, the app surfaced exactly what I needed.”

Even initial skepticism about whether AI could handle inconsistent document formats quickly faded. “Every entry involves multiple formats and layouts,” Karlo explains. “I wasn’t convinced an AI app could handle that reliably. In reality, it handled document variations far better than I expected. Instead of creating extra work, it reduced our manual processing time significantly.”

Today, the longest part of the process is often simply waiting a couple of minutes for Reform to read and structure the documents, after which the specialist audits and approves before transmission to ABI.

{{component-author}}

The Result: More Predictability, Higher Standards, and Strategic Client Focus

Reform has reduced hands-on entry processing time from roughly 60 minutes to 10–15 minutes, depending on complexity. Simpler entries that previously took around 30 minutes are now completed in as little as 5–10 minutes.

But the impact extends beyond speed. Pre-Reform, timing and quality could depend heavily on who touched the file, how clean the documents were, and how many last-minute corrections appeared. Now, Interlink can absorb messy, high-volume days while maintaining consistent outputs and tighter internal standards.

The reclaimed time has allowed the team to focus more heavily on:

• Structured auditing and exception handling
• Quality control and internal training
• Proactive tariff consulting and compliance education for clients
• Scaling into more complex filings, including PGA-heavy shipments such as FDA-related entries
• Leveraging client product catalogs to pre-map SKUs to approved HTS codes, improving classification consistency and reducing repetitive research

‍

Eduardo, Process Improvement Lead, describes the transformation clearly: “Reform is the difference between building an entry from scratch and starting with a ready-to-review draft. Humans still make the real judgment calls, but the repetitive extraction and reconciliation that used to eat an hour on multi-line shipments is gone.”

Perhaps the most important shift is operational stability. Interlink now runs brokerage operations with predictability and control rather than constant improvisation. The team is no longer just surviving workload spikes. Rather, they have the capacity to strengthen QA processes, improve training, and deliver higher-quality customer service even in a volatile tariff climate.

As Interlink sums it up: “Imagine having an app that reads all your entry documents for you, fills in the key data, and cuts your workload down from an hour to just a few minutes. It doesn’t replace your judgment—it just makes your job faster and a lot easier. That’s Reform.”

‍