How ITS works

Everything in ITS starts with one declaration: a consignment, its parties, its guarantee and the office it leaves from. This page follows one declaration from Johannesburg to Kampala, through Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania. You do not need any of this to use the portal, but knowing it explains what each screen is telling you.

The journey at a glance

Each box is one customs administration. Each administration's customs system sends ITS its stamps, and ITS adds each stamp to the one record everybody reads.

Every country does the same three things

Every country on the corridor performs three acts on its own stretch of the journey. Only the first and the last country differ, in which act stands in for which.

Country	First act	Second act	Third act
Departure country	Departure: the declaration is lodged and registered	Release: the goods are let go to run inland	Exit: the goods leave, and the next country is named
Each transit country	Transit entry: the goods are recorded at the border	Release	Exit, naming the next country
Destination country	Transit entry	Release, when the office of destination is inland	Discharge: the transit is closed

The words in bold are the names the portal uses for each stamp, in the Corridor tab and the Custody list of a declaration.

note

A declaration's first stamp is written the moment it is lodged. That is why a declaration that has not moved yet already shows 1 in the Stamps column.

Nobody declares the route in advance

There is no route box on the Transit Document. Instead, each country names only the next country, on its own exit stamp. South Africa names Zimbabwe; Zimbabwe names Zambia; and so on. If the goods are re-routed, the country doing it simply names a different next country.

So the route you see in the portal, the corridor, is worked out from the stamps ITS has received, in the order it received them. It is never a plan. A country that appears with an empty circle and Between administrations is the one that has been named next but has not stamped entry yet.

Who holds the declaration

At any moment one country holds the declaration: the country that has recorded the goods and has not yet stamped them out. The portal shows it as Held by. Between an exit and the next entry, nobody holds it: the goods are Between administrations. After a discharge nobody holds it either, because the transit is over.

At one-stop border posts, where two administrations share a building, the arriving country often stamps entry before the departing country stamps exit. ITS accepts both orders. The arriving country can always record that the goods reached it, but it cannot release them inland until the country behind has stamped its exit.

The states a declaration moves through

The state is where the declaration stands in its journey. It changes with the stamps, and it goes round the same loop for every country.

State, as shown	What it means
Registered	Lodged at the office of departure. The goods have not moved.
Departed	Released to run inland, towards a border it has not reached. It does not mean the goods left the country.
In transit	Between administrations: one country has stamped its exit, the next has not stamped entry.
Arrived	A country's office of entry has recorded the goods in its territory. It does not only mean the destination: it is whichever country the goods are in.
Discharged	The destination closed the transit. Final.
Cancelled	Withdrawn by the departure country before any country stamped its exit. Final.

Statuses and colours shows how each one looks on screen. The integrator's version of this, with every rule, is Lifecycle and stamps.

Every act adds a version

A declaration is never edited in place. Lodging it creates version 1. Every stamp, every correction, every attached document and a cancellation each add a new version, signed by ITS. So a declaration that has crossed four countries is at version 15 or so without anybody having corrected anything.

The History tab lists every version and lets you compare two of them. The Transit document tab prints the latest one. See Declaration details.

ITS tells the corridor

When a version is added, ITS announces it to the administrations that need to know:

• the departure country;
• every country that has stamped the declaration;
• the country named as next;
• the destination country.

Nobody else is told, and no country is told about its own act. Each administration's system confirms receipt, and the Who has been told list on the History tab shows those confirmations. The same events appear in each administration's notifications.

When the destination has no system on ITS

Some corridors end in a country whose customs system is not yet connected. The goods still travel under the declaration. When the last connected country stamps its exit, ITS waits until the end of the transit window the declaration gave. If nothing else is stamped by then, ITS closes the transit itself.

A closure by ITS is not proof of arrival

A transit closed by an officer at the office of destination means that administration saw the goods. A transit closed by ITS means ITS lost sight of the goods after they left for a country with no system on ITS. Both read Discharged.

What this means for you

You notice	The reason
A declaration that has not moved already has 1 stamp	Lodging writes the departure stamp
The version number is 15 but nobody corrected anything	Every stamp adds a version
Departed for goods that have already crossed several borders	Each country releases the goods inland; the state follows the current country
Arrived for goods still far from their destination	Arrived means "entered the country it is in now"
A country on the corridor shows an empty circle	It was named next and has not stamped entry yet
Held by: Between administrations	One country has stamped exit and the next has not stamped entry
A country you expected is missing from the corridor	Nobody named it as next; the route is only what the stamps say