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Consulting & Audit Support

Have you been notified that your company will be audited?

Customs Audit Support

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regularly performs audits in order to assess importers compliance with trade laws and requirements. These audits can range from a CF 28 (Request for Information) to a full review of a company’s importing practice. CBP is increasing its focus on audits in order to determine the probability of noncompliance. This means no matter the size of your company, you could be subject to a Customs audit at any time.

The experienced staff at Copper Hill is ready to guide you through the audit process. We can respond, on your company’s behalf, to any request you receive from CBP. This includes CF 28s, CF 29s, liquidated damages claims, penalty notices, Quick Response Audits and the various questionnaires that come along with Customs audits.

Going through a Customs audit cannot necessarily be avoided, but it can be made easier. To become better prepared, Copper Hill offers full compliance reviews as well as the development of compliance manuals and procedures. Preparation is key when it comes to ensuring your company is compliant with all of Customs rules and regulations.

CTPAT/Trusted Trade Programs

Do your customers have supply chain security requirements?

The Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) is a program developed to validate supply chain security and give preference to certified members. By becoming a certified CTPAT supplier, your company enters a partnership with US Customs and Border Protection and is considered low-risk and is less likely to have goods examined at the border. To apply for the program suppliers must meet strict security requirements and have complete transparency throughout their entire supply chain.

GTM Systems Implementation

The Copper Hill Systems Integration Team has extensive experience supporting clients as they transition, fully or partially, into a new trade compliance system.  With our involvement, clients can continue to stay focused on their primary role of managing trade compliance for their organization, while the systems implementation continues under our full attention. We’ll work with you from the software evaluation stage through full implementation and process transition, or any phase in between.  

Services that we offer include UAT (User Acceptance Testing), test case development and execution with readily available metrics and status reports, and we’ll handle the exchange of information regarding test failures and corrective measures with your software provider. We’ll assist with any third-party communications and work with those teams to ensure successful execution of interface changes. To minimize start-up interruptions, we can provide user training for your team and external service providers, and a detailed cutover plan will be developed and tailored to your organization to ensure a successful transition from your existing environment to your new trade compliance system. 

We’re there beside you throughout the process, taking the burden off of your team wherever it makes sense for you.  Let us help you successfully transition into a new environment with the least amount of disruption to your daily operations.

Import Compliance Assessments

With global supply chain security risk escalating over the last 20 years, Customs authorities all over the world have invested significantly in increased enforcement of import law and regulation. This coupled with the ongoing modernization of Customs regimes, presents government entities with a wide range of tools and audit methodologies to identify violations of trade regulation and law. With increased resources to focus on enforcement, fines and penalties are no longer limited to large multinational companies.

Copper Hill’s Import Compliance Assessment is an independent proactive review of your importing activity and Trade Compliance Program to identify strengths, weakness, risk and opportunities. The assessments are tailored to your specific business and designed to improve your compliance program while at the same time identifying duty optimization opportunities.  Throughout the process Copper Hill will help you document processes and procedures specifically tailored to Customs expectations, and where relevant, recommend best practices to enhance these policies and procedures. In addition, Copper Hill will generate a roadmap to implement best in class compliance programs.

Copper Hill has a bench of Trade professionals with extensive experience working for Fortune 500 companies managing their Import compliance programs. We have used this expertise to develop strong documented processes and procedures to assist facilitating reduced risk or violations of the global import.

Pre-Acquisition Due Diligence Review

Copper Hill conducts Due Diligence reviews specific to Import laws and regulations, for Businesses purchasing other companies. This allows the purchasing entity to identify any risk of potential successor liability prior to completing the purchase, thus allowing the business to place an accurate value on the company being purchased.  Due Diligence is critical to ensuring any potential liability owed to Customs has been determined, and all risks have been identified. 

Areas covered during Due Diligence include compliance with import trade law, and in some cases, personal liability. The risk assessment focuses on the nature of the targets business, industry, countries it operates, third parties utilized and the extent the target interacts with government officials or has government customers, and the underlying strength of the compliance program and internal controls.  A roadmap with suggested actions for remediating ongoing risk is also an import component of Copper Hill’s review, to help facilitate enhancing internal controls.

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