Still reconciling export bills physically? Use ICICI Bank's Trade Online and bid your woes goodbye

By ICICI Bank Editorial Team

Hardik Mehta runs a large export business, however, warnings from his bank manager that he might be caution listed give him sleepless nights.?This is happening because his firm had not regularised the bills for almost half the consignments it had shipped before the lockdown began in March 2020.

This is a fairly common problem that exporters like Hardik face of non-realisation of payments of pre-pandemic consignments. RBI mandates that all exporters must realise payments for shipped or invoiced consignments, within 9 months of the shipping date (the regulator extended this to 15 months, after the pandemic which is also proving to be too short given the new normal).

For small exporters who have one or two shipments a month, it is perhaps feasible to manage the process of the export bill realisation, reconciliation and regularisation, manually. But for large exporters like Hardik Mehta with hundreds of consignments, this can prove quite challenging.

Bill regularisation becomes crucial because exporters run the risk of both facing penalties as well as delay in receipt of government incentives, which can significantly impact their bottom line.

Even before the pandemic, the launch of multiple digital systems, including the Export Data Processing and Monitoring System (EDPMS) portal by RBI and the Indian Customs Electronic Gateway (ICEGATE), enabled banks to digitise many such manual procedures.

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What is Export Bill Regularisation?

When exporters send a shipment, the shipping bill is approved by Customs and information is uploaded onto EDPMS. Upon receipt of payment, they must submit shipping bill and other documents to the bank for matching against payment proceeds. This particular step called regularisation is required, because there is often a mismatch between the payment and the value declared on the shipping bill – which may be on account of various reasons including quality claims, part damage in transit etc.

Digitisation of export processes has been facilitated by the launch of RBI’s EDPMS. Now when an exporter ships a consignment, all concerned shipping bill details become available against the exporter’s Import Export (IE) Code on the RBI’s EDPMS Portal, to which both Customs and banks have access.

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How does e-BRC generation process work?

Once the Bank receives the export proceeds and settles the outstanding export bill, it issues a Bank Realisation Certificate (e-BRC), which is required by the exporter for claiming applicable export incentives.

ICICI Bank Trade Online, makes this shipping bill data available online along with all the remittances that the exporter has received. In just a few clicks, the exporters can match relevant bills against a particular remittance and send the regularisation request to the Bank. ICICI Bank will process the request, update the status on the EDPMS and issue the e-BRC.

Hence, exporters like Hardik no longer need extra manpower for going through reams of paperwork to manually reconcile bills and remittances. Additionally, bill regularisation request can be initiated remotely, at anytime, digitally. More importantly, with no delays in reconciliation, government incentives are received faster.

So, Exporters, if you are looking for a seamless and hassle-free way to regularise your bills, reach out to us here.

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