Why You Need AI For Fast, Compliant Duty Drawback
Ryan Janusee
3 mins read
Nov 7, 2025
Table of Contents
Subscribe to
Caspian Currents
Share
The solution is a new, AI-native approach that rebuilds the entire workflow, from document ingestion to claim optimization, to maximize refunds and ensure compliance. Artificial Intelligence is not a single technology but a group of capabilities that, when applied to drawback, create a system that is faster, smarter, and more reliable than any manual or legacy software process.
Intelligent Ingestion (OCR & NLP)
A huge problem in drawback is incomplete or unstructured data locked in PDFs. AI solves this by using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract raw text and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand its context. An NLP model can identify a product number or invoice number no matter where it appears on the page, turning a pile of documents into a structured, usable database automatically.
Automated Product Catalogs
Keeping track of changing part numbers and classifications is a common pain point. AI-powered systems can ingest and structure data to keep product catalogs seamlessly updated, eliminating a major source of manual error.
Correlation and Optimization (Machine Learning)
This is what truly sets AI Drawback apart. Instead of rigid, rule-based logic, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms perform a complex, probabilistic analysis. They correlate all import data against all export data to find the absolute best pairings that yield the maximum refund. ML can trace an imported component through a multi-level Bill of Materials to a finished exported product or find likely matches in incomplete data and flag them for human review—saving claims that would have been abandoned under older methods.
Enhanced Compliance
Fear of CBP drawback audits comes from having to put up with disorganized, hand-maintained systems. AI Drawback systems can be trained on Full Desk Reviews. They can take the provided documentation and create a 100% defensible audit trail.
Maximized Optimization
Claimants see extra refunds when moving past "cherry-picking" and rigid coding. An AI methodology ensures that 100% of the data supplied is analyzed every time.
Unmatched Speed
AI systems are much, much faster at processing drawback data. This accelerated process turns what would have been months or weeks of work into mere days or minutes.
