Ocean Arrival Notice: Charges, Free Time and What to Check

The arrival notice landed in a shared inbox on Thursday evening, addressed to a notify party email that belonged to a forwarder the importer had stopped using in spring. Nobody opened it until the vessel had berthed. By then the free days were half gone, the customs filing deadline had passed, and the carrier's collect charges included a cleaning fee that appeared in no contract anyone could find.

An ocean arrival notice is a short document, usually two pages, yet it starts three separate clocks: the carrier's free time, the customs filing window and the date after which unclaimed cargo can be moved or sold. Reading it the same way every time, with each field tied to a source record and each charge tied to a contract line, turns it from a reminder into a control that prevents storage bills and late filing charges.

• What this guide covers: who issues the notice and who must act on it, the header fields that matter, which charge lines are freight and which are local fees, and how free time is counted.
• Regulatory clocks: the US general order and demurrage invoice rules, and India's advance bill of entry, late presentation charge and 30-day custodian rule.
• Working material: a worked notice in dollars and rupees, an hour-by-hour failure, a structured record for the notice, and a desk checklist.

Who issues an arrival notice and who has to act on it

The arrival notice is an advice from whoever issued the bill of lading, not a demand for payment and not a contract. A vessel-operating carrier sends one against its master bill; an NVOCC or forwarder sends its own against the house bill. The importer may therefore receive two notices for one container, with different charge lists, and only one of them is addressed to the party that will actually pay.

The recipients come straight from the bill of lading. The consignee is the party entitled to delivery; under a to-order bill that may be a bank or "to order of shipper", which is why carriers also send the notice to the notify party. The notify party has no title to the goods; it is simply the name the shipper typed in the box, and it is often out of date by the time the vessel sails.

Because two different documents can say "arrival notice", keep both and file each against its own bill. The house notice tells you what your forwarder will collect; the master notice tells you what the carrier will collect from the forwarder, and occasionally from you if the forwarder fails to pay. Our separate guide to straight and order bills of lading explains why the consignee box decides who can take delivery.

Header fields that decide where the box is and who can take it

Five header fields decide whether the cargo can be cleared and collected: the bill number, the containers, the place of delivery, the cargo location code and the parties. A mistake in any of them costs days, while a mistake in a charge line usually costs money that can be recovered later.

• Bill number pairing: the house bill on the forwarder's notice and the master bill on the carrier's notice must point to the same containers; brokers file on one and carriers release on the other.
• Port versus place of delivery: a notice for Los Angeles may show an inland rail destination such as Chicago, and an Indian notice for Nhava Sheva may show an ICD; free time and customs location follow the place of delivery.
• US location code: CBP Form 3461 asks for the FIRMS code of the facility where goods are available for examination, so the broker needs the terminal or CFS code from the notice before filing.
• India manifest reference: the carrier's arrival manifest under Customs Act Section 30 is filed electronically before arrival, and the bill of entry must quote the matching manifest details.
• Containers and seals: compare every container and seal number to the packing list and the shipper's advice; a transposed digit blocks release and can trigger an examination.
• Weights and packages: declared weight on the notice should equal the bill of lading; a gap of more than a few percent usually means the wrong bill or a split shipment.

Freight lines versus local fees on the charge list

Split the charge list into freight the buyer agreed to pay and local fees the destination carrier or terminal sets. Freight should match a contract or quote exactly; local fees should match a published tariff or a named contract clause, and any line with neither reference is a question for the issuer before money moves.

The split matters because the payment terms differ. Freight collect under a purchase term such as FOB or FCA is the buyer's cost, and the notice should show the contracted rate. Local charges at destination, such as terminal handling, documentation or delivery order fees, are usually collected from the consignee regardless of the sales term, and they are where unexplained fees appear.

In India the notice will usually show GST against each local fee. The service classification and rate belong to the tax team, and our note on SAC codes for logistics services covers how terminal, documentation and detention lines are classified. The documentation desk only needs to confirm that the tax on the notice is computed on the right base and that the line has a contract reference.

When free time starts and why the notice estimate drifts

Free time is set by the carrier's tariff or the service contract, not by the arrival notice. Most notices print a free-time figure and sometimes a last free day calculated from the ETA, and that estimate is wrong whenever the vessel berths late, discharge takes two days or the container is not available for pickup on discharge.

Three questions decide the real start: what event starts the clock (discharge, gate availability or rail arrival at an inland point), whether weekends and holidays count, and whether demurrage and detention are counted separately or as a combined allowance. The answer sits in a tariff rule number, which the notice should quote and the documentation desk should store against the bill.

{
  "noticeId": "AN-LAX-2611-0457",
  "issuer": "NVOCC",
  "houseBill": "HBL-SHA-884215",
  "masterBill": "MBL-0047731902",
  "containers": [{ "number": "TGHU 834561 0", "seal": "CN4471902", "size": "40HC" }],
  "placeOfDelivery": "Los Angeles terminal",
  "firmsCode": "from notice, confirmed by broker",
  "freeTime": {
    "days": 4,
    "basis": "container availability",
    "countsWeekends": true,
    "tariffRule": "local tariff rule reference as printed",
    "estimatedStart": "2026-11-18",
    "confirmedStart": null
  },
  "charges": [
    { "code": "OFR", "amount": 2850.00, "currency": "USD", "contractRate": 2650.00 },
    { "code": "DDC", "amount": 1050.00, "currency": "USD", "contractRate": 975.00 },
    { "code": "DOC", "amount": 85.00, "currency": "USD", "contractRate": 85.00 }
  ]
}

lastFreeDay = confirmedStart + (freeDays - 1)     when the start day counts as day 1
exposure    = max(0, plannedPickup - lastFreeDay) x dailyRate
lineVariance = amount - contractRate              hold the line if |variance| > tolerance

Keep confirmedStart empty until the terminal or carrier shows the actual availability date. An estimated start copied from the notice is useful for planning a truck, but it should never be the date used to approve a demurrage invoice, because the US rules discussed next require the invoice itself to show the real dates.

Arrival notice free time recorded in the import tracker should carry the tariff rule, the start event and a confirmed start date; planners can book pickup from the estimate, but demurrage approval waits for the invoice dates required by 46 CFR 541.6(b), including all eight timing items such as the container availability date.

US clearance clock: entry, general order and the billing rules

In the US, the arrival notice starts a 15-day customs clock and sets up a later demurrage invoice that has to meet federal content rules. Both deadlines are written down, so both can be calculated from the notice on the day it arrives.

Under 19 CFR 4.37(a), merchandise landed without a release may remain at the place of unlading through the 15th calendar day after landing. By the 20th day the carrier must notify CBP of unentered goods and notify a bonded warehouse that takes general order cargo, which then moves the goods at the consignee's risk and expense. Late notice by the carrier can bring liquidated damages of $1,000 per bill of lading.

Unentered import cargo at a US port may remain at the place of unlading only through the 15th calendar day after landing under 19 CFR 4.37(a); the import tracker should set the entry deadline from the vessel's landing date on the arrival notice, never from the date the notice was opened.

Demurrage and detention are billed separately from the notice. 46 CFR 541.6 lists what each invoice must contain: bill of lading and container numbers, the basis for billing that party, free-time days with start and end dates, the container availability date for imports, the specific days charged, the tariff or contract rule and rate, dispute contacts and a certification by the billing party.

• Missing information: under 46 CFR 541.5, if an invoice omits any required item, the billed party has no obligation to pay that charge.
• Issuance deadline: 46 CFR 541.7(a) requires the invoice within 30 calendar days of the date the charge was last incurred, failing which the charge is not payable.
• Dispute window: 46 CFR 541.8 gives the billed party at least 30 calendar days from issuance to request mitigation, refund or waiver, and the billing party must try to resolve the request within 30 days.
• Who may be billed: the D.C. Circuit set aside 46 CFR 541.4 on 23 September 2025, and the FMC removed it in December 2025, so which party receives the invoice now rests on contracts rather than that section.

Demurrage invoices issued by US ocean carriers, terminals and NVOCCs must show free-time start and end dates and the container availability date under 46 CFR 541.6(b), and an invoice issued more than 30 calendar days after the charge was last incurred is not payable under 46 CFR 541.7(a).

The day-by-day demurrage and per diem audit is covered in our page on demurrage and detention milestone clocks under OSRA, which deals with the invoice once it arrives. This article stops earlier, at the notice, where the job is to set the dates that invoice will later be tested against.

India clearance clock: advance bill of entry, late fee and Section 48

India moves the customs deadline ahead of arrival. For goods cleared at a seaport, Customs Act Section 46(3) requires the bill of entry before the end of the day, holidays included, preceding the day the vessel arrives, and it may be filed up to 30 days before expected arrival. The arrival notice is often the first reliable ETA the importer sees, so it effectively sets the filing date.

CBIC Circular 08/2021-Customs and Notification 34/2021-Customs (N.T.) relaxed this for some cases. As Jawaharlal Nehru Custom House's Public Notice 29/2021 sets out, seaport imports consigned from Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka may be filed by the end of the day of arrival, and an advance filing may quote the house bill of lading when the master bill is not yet available.

Indian importers clearing at a seaport must present the bill of entry on the customs automated system before the end of the day preceding vessel arrival under Customs Act Section 46(3); late presentation costs ₹5,000 a day for three days and ₹10,000 a day afterwards under Regulation 4(3) of the 2018 bill of entry regulations.

• Late charge cap: Regulation 4(4) limits the late presentation charge to the duty payable on that bill of entry, or ₹50,000 where no duty is payable, for example because of an exemption.
• Waiver route: the proper officer may waive the charge when satisfied with the reasons for delay; JNCH Public Notice 29/2024 sets out how waiver requests are made at that custom house.
• Thirty-day custodian rule: under Section 48, goods not cleared, warehoused or transhipped within 30 days of unloading may be sold by the custodian after notice to the importer and with the proper officer's permission.
• Detained goods: Regulation 6(1)(l) of the Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations, 2009 bars the custodian from charging rent or demurrage on goods detained by customs, subject to any other law.

Delivery order, CFS and container detention charges in India are commercial. No central tariff fixes them; shipping lines and CFS operators publish their own local charges, and the importer's protection is the contract and a written quote. That is why the Indian column in the worked example below checks every local line against a quote rather than against a regulation.

Worked arrival notice in dollars and rupees

Comparing each notice line to its contract reference before payment catches most pricing errors in minutes. The example uses one 40-foot high cube into Los Angeles on a house bill and one into Nhava Sheva on a carrier bill; all rates are illustrative and do not describe any carrier's tariff.

The bottom row is the point of the exercise. The pricing variances, $275 and ₹3,304, are real money but recoverable. The deadline costs, $750 of demurrage and ₹15,000 of late filing charge, are larger and usually unrecoverable, because they follow from the importer's own delay rather than the carrier's pricing.

A box that missed its free days, hour by hour

Most arrival notice failures are routing failures, not reading failures: the notice exists, but it reaches the wrong person or is read after the window closes. The trace below follows one Indian import where every document was correct and the cargo still ran up charges.

1. Day -3, 18:20: Shipping line emails arrival notice AN/NSA/24117 for container MSKU 702418 3 to the notify party address on the bill, which belongs to the importer's previous forwarder. No acknowledgement is requested.
2. Day 0, 06:40: Vessel berths at Nhava Sheva. The arrival manifest was filed before arrival, but no bill of entry exists; the Section 46(3) deadline passed at midnight.
3. Day 2, 11:15: The importer's CHA learns of the arrival from the supplier and files the bill of entry. A late presentation charge for three days, ₹15,000, is levied at assessment.
4. Day 3, 16:00: The line holds the delivery order until a ₹1,800 cleaning fee and its GST are paid. The importer pays under protest to avoid further ground rent at the CFS.
5. Day 5, 10:30: Container leaves the CFS after out of charge. Total avoidable cost: ₹15,000 late charge, two extra days of CFS ground rent and a dispute that takes six weeks to settle.

The controlled version changes three things. The notify party on the draft bill is checked against a role-based imports mailbox before the shipper issues it. The bill of entry is filed two days before ETA on the house bill reference, which the 2021 changes allow. And the cleaning fee is logged as a disputed line with the notice number, so payment under protest does not end the claim.

Checks a system can run and checks a documentation clerk must make

Matching numbers and computing dates are rule work a system should do every time; deciding whether an unfamiliar charge is payable, and whether to pay under protest, is a commercial judgement that stays with a person. Software that reads PDFs speeds the first part but should not make the second.

Two adjacent pages go deeper on what happens after the notice. Our guide to separating demurrage, detention and terminal storage explains which party issues each storage charge, and our logistics articles index lists the related customs and documentation guides.

An arrival notice desk checklist for the days before berthing

A short, dated checklist run on every notice is cheaper than any recovery effort. The items below assume a notice received three to five days before ETA; when it arrives later, the customs filing line moves to the top.

If your team is weighing a documentation workflow that captures arrival notices, checks charges against contracts and tracks free time across ports, you can share your requirements with us and we will map them against the checks in this guide.