How the refund is supposed to flow
Your shipping bill acts as the refund application. Customs matches it against your GST return data, and if everything reconciles, the refund is credited to your registered account. When it does not reconcile, nothing happens — and nobody calls to tell you why.
The usual culprits
- Invoice number mismatch. The invoice number on the shipping bill differs from the one in your GST return — even by a space, a slash or a leading zero. This is the most common single cause.
- Value or tax mismatch. The taxable value or IGST amount declared in the return does not equal what is on the shipping bill.
- EGM not filed. The Export General Manifest has not been filed by the carrier, or was filed with errors. Until the EGM is correct, the export is not treated as complete.
- Bank account or AD code not registered. The account nominated for the refund is not validated at the port, or the AD code is not registered against that port.
- Return not filed for the period. The relevant GST return covering that invoice has not been filed.
Each of these produces a distinct error code against the shipping bill. The code tells you which problem you have — a success status means the record has passed validation. Anything else needs a specific fix, and fixing the wrong thing wastes weeks.
How to work it out
- Check the status of the specific shipping bill, not your refunds in general.
- Read the error against it and match the fix to that error.
- Corrections usually go through your CHA or your GST filing, depending on which side the mismatch sits.
- After correcting, the record has to be transmitted again — the fix alone does not release the money.
Prevention beats cure
Most mismatches are created at the moment the shipping bill is filed. If the invoice number, taxable value and IGST amount on the shipping bill are checked against your accounting record before filing, the majority of these problems never arise.