Choosing a customs analytics tool
Three ways to review what you declared. Only one of them is us.
If you are looking at customs data analytics, you are choosing between building it yourself, using the analytics inside your filing platform, or bringing in a post-clearance review specialist. They suit different businesses. This page sets out which is which, says plainly where CAT360 is the wrong answer, and gives you the questions worth asking whoever you talk to.
First, check you are comparing the same thing.
Customs software splits into two jobs that get sold under the same words. Filing software submits declarations to HMRC: Sequoia, CargoWise, Descartes, Langdon DMS and others. Post-clearance review reads the declarations after they cleared and tells you what was wrong with them. A tool can do one, the other, or both.
The distinction matters because the data is the same either way. Whatever you file with, HMRC gives you your own declaration data back through Get customs data for import and export declarations, the free service that replaced the paid MSS reports. Everything on this page is about what happens to that data next.
CAT360 does post-clearance review only. We do not file, and we will not ask you to change what you file with.
The three approaches.
Roughly in order of how much of the work you do yourself.
Build it in Excel or Power BI
Pull the CSV reports yourself and analyse them with the tools you already own.
- Suits
- Low declaration volumes, a one-off investigation, or a business with in-house analysts and a customs specialist who can tell them what to look for.
- The catch
- Visualisation is the easy part. The work is enrichment: joining every line to the live tariff, flagging anomalies, filtering across several EORIs. That is the part that does not finish, because the tariff changes weekly.
- Real cost
- Analyst time, plus a model only one person understands.
Your filing platform's analytics
Use the reporting or audit module inside the system your declarations are already filed from.
- Suits
- Businesses that file in-house on one platform and want one vendor, one contract and one login for both jobs.
- The catch
- It sees what that platform filed. If you use more than one broker or more than one system, it sees a slice. And the tool reviewing the work belongs to whoever did the work.
- Real cost
- Usually a module fee on an existing contract.
A post-clearance review specialist
A separate tool, and usually separate people, whose only job is checking declarations after the event.
- Suits
- Anyone using multiple brokers, anyone who needs the review to be independent of the filer, and anyone who has to evidence self-checking to HMRC or under PAS 41201.
- The catch
- It is another vendor and another subscription, and it will not file anything for you.
- Real cost
- A subscription. Ours is on the pricing page.
This is where CAT360 sits.
When CAT360 is the wrong choice.
Worth knowing before you book a demo rather than after.
You need declarations filed. We do not file, and we are not going to. Post-clearance review is the whole product. Keep your filing software.
You need regimes beyond the UK. CAT360 reads UK CDS data. If your priority is US, EU or multi-country customs data in one place, other tools in this category cover more ground than we do and you should look at them.
You file a handful of declarations a year. Below a certain volume the errors are cheap to find by hand and a subscription will not pay for itself. Ask us and we will tell you if that is you.
What we do that is worth paying for.
Three things, and they are all consequences of the same fact: CAT360 was built inside a customs consultancy, by the people who do this work by hand for clients.
Every finding cites its legal source and the declaration line
Not a score, not a flag on a dashboard. A finding names the commodity code, the measure or preference at issue, the legal basis, and the exact declaration line it came from. That is what makes it something you can act on, put in a C285, or hand to HMRC. Ask any vendor to show you a single finding end to end and see what comes back.
The people who wrote the checks will take your call
Barbourne Brook are practising customs consultants, several from Big Four backgrounds. The algorithms in CAT360 encode the checks they run on engagements. When a finding is ambiguous, and some always are, you are talking to someone who does this for a living rather than to support.
We track what HMRC changes, in public
Our tariff alerts archive holds 747 HMRC live issues, stop press notices and service updates, going back to 2018, refreshed weekly and free to read without an account. It is the same feed the platform checks your declarations against. You can judge the quality of our tariff data before you pay us anything.
Seven questions to ask any vendor, including us.
These are the questions that separate tools which find things from tools which display things. Take them into every demo you book.
- Show me one finding, all the way down. From the dashboard number to the declaration line and the legal provision behind it. If a finding cannot be traced to a source, you cannot claim it back or defend it.
- Where does the tariff data come from, and how often does it update? A classification check is only as good as the tariff it is checked against, and the UK tariff changes constantly.
- How do you handle several brokers and several EORIs? If you use more than one intermediary, a tool that only sees one of them will tell you the wrong thing about your exposure.
- Do you file, review, or both, and who owns the review? If the tool reviewing the declarations comes from the party that filed them, decide whether that matters to you. Sometimes it does not. For PAS 41201 evidence and for broker oversight, it does.
- What happens to my data after a trial that does not convert? Ask for the answer in writing. Declaration data is commercially sensitive.
- Can I see it working on my own data before I commit? Sample dashboards prove a tool renders. Your own declarations prove it finds things.
- What is the total price at my volume, including extra users and any onboarding fee? Get the second-year number too.
Questions
Does CAT360 replace my filing software?
No, and it never will. CAT360 reads what was filed after the goods cleared. Keep filing on whatever you use now, whether that is Sequoia, CargoWise, Descartes, Langdon DMS or an in-house system. Post-clearance analysis is all we do.
Can I try it on my own declarations before deciding?
Yes. The 14-day trial runs on your own CDS reports, on the Enterprise tier, with no card required. If you would rather not pull the reports yourself, you can authorise us to retrieve them for you.
What does it cost compared with doing it in-house?
The honest comparison is against analyst time rather than against another subscription. SME is £499 a month for businesses with turnover up to £10m and Enterprise £999 above that, with the current tiers on the pricing page. Whether that beats building it yourself depends on your volume and on whether you have someone who can maintain a tariff join indefinitely.
Is CAT360 only for UK declarations?
Yes. It reads UK CDS data, the reports HMRC gives you through its Get customs data service. That is a deliberate limit rather than a roadmap gap: the value comes from depth in one tariff. If you need several customs regimes in one tool, we are not the right fit.
Where is my data held, and who can see it?
AWS eu-west-2, London. CAT360 is multi-tenant software as a service operated entirely by Barbourne Brook, with every query scoped to a single customer and role-based access inside the application. Your data is never sold, pooled or reused, and Barbourne Brook is Cyber Essentials Plus certified, independently assessed under the NCSC scheme and verifiable by company name on the NCSC register. The full detail is on the security page.
Do I need to be AEO to use it?
No. AEO businesses often see value fastest because of their volume and complexity, but any business with UK declarations can use CAT360.
The fastest way to compare is on your own data.
Every tool in this category looks convincing on sample data. Run CAT360 over your own declarations for 14 days and judge it on what it finds in your filings, not ours. No card required.