The EXIM compliance calendar for exporters and importers

An exporter and an importer carry two calendars. One is the accounting calendar every Indian business shares, and it is well documented. The other is the shipment calendar, and almost nothing published about it names an instrument. This page is the second calendar. It is organised by rhythm rather than by month, because a shipment deadline is almost never a fixed date: it is a rule that counts from an event on your own file.

Why is this calendar written as rules and not as dates?

Because almost every entry below counts from something your file already records: an invoice date, a date of export, a date of arrival, a date of remittance. A page that prints fixed dates is wrong for every reader whose shipment fell on a different day, and it goes stale the moment a notification moves a threshold. A rule stated with its instrument survives both problems. Where a fixed date genuinely exists, it appears here with the instrument that fixes it, and where we could not confirm one, it is listed as unconfirmed rather than guessed.

What is owed on every single export shipment?

These are the per shipment obligations on the export leg. Each one is decided by an event on the file rather than by the month, and the first is the only entry in this calendar with no remedy at all afterwards.

• The scheme declaration in the shipping bill. Owed by the exporter, through the customs broker, at the moment the shipping bill is filed. ICEGATE Advisory No. 01/2021 dated 01-01-2021 provides that to avail RoDTEP the exporter shall make a claim in the shipping bill by making a declaration. Miss it and the claim for that shipment does not exist to be recovered later.
• The endorsement on the export invoice. Owed by the exporter at invoicing. The third proviso to rule 46 of the CGST Rules requires an export invoice to carry the endorsement "SUPPLY MEANT FOR EXPORT ... ON PAYMENT OF INTEGRATED TAX" or the corresponding bond or Letter of Undertaking wording, and to carry the name and address of the recipient, the address of delivery and the name of the country of destination.
• Export of the goods under a Letter of Undertaking. Owed by the exporter within three months of the invoice date. Rule 96A(1)(a) of the CGST Rules binds the exporter to pay the tax due with interest under section 50(1) within fifteen days after the expiry of three months from the date of issue of the export invoice if the goods are not exported.
• Receipt of payment for exported services. Owed within one year of the invoice date. Rule 96A(1)(b) applies the same fifteen day consequence after the expiry of one year where payment is not received in convertible foreign exchange, or in Indian rupees wherever permitted by the Reserve Bank.
• Realisation of the proceeds. Nine months from the date of export under paragraph A.2(i) of the Reserve Bank's FED Master Direction No. 16/2015-16 on Export of Goods and Services, moving to fifteen months from 01-10-2026 under the FEMA Export and Import Regulations 2026. Shipments either side of that date are judged on different windows, which the realisation clock guide takes apart.

What is owed on every single import shipment?

The import leg is denser, because customs, the tax and the foreign exchange rules each attach a separate clock to the same box. Three of the four below are charged by somebody other than the government when they slip.

• The bill of entry. Owed by the importer, through the customs broker, before the end of the day, including holidays, preceding the day of arrival of the vessel at the customs port or station. Section 46 of the Customs Act as amended by the Finance Act, 2021 sets that rule, and Board Circular No. 08/2021-Customs dated 29-03-2021 prescribes different time limits by mode of transport, as recorded in Hyderabad Customs Public Notice No. 12/2021 dated 29-03-2021. The late filing fee is imposed by the Customs EDI system itself.
• The duty payment. Owed once the bill of entry is returned for payment, within the period section 47(2) of the Customs Act allows, with interest at 15 percent on any delay beyond it. This is also the entry with the largest controllable lag, which the bill of entry amendment guide quantifies from CBIC's own time study.
• The import remittance. Owed not later than six months from the date of shipment, per paragraph B.5.1(i) of the Reserve Bank's FED Master Direction No. 17/2016-17 on Import of Goods and Services.
• The evidence of import. Owed to the authorised dealer bank after remittance. Paragraph C.7.1(i) of the same Master Direction requires the bill of entry number, the port code and the date for marking evidence of import under IDPMS, and paragraph C.10(i) puts the bank into rigorous follow-up where the evidence is not furnished within three months of the remittance.
• The origin evidence behind a preferential claim. Held from the moment the claim is made, not assembled when it is questioned. Proof of origin, what changed sets out the five year horizon that sits behind it.

What is owed every month?

The monthly rhythm is the tax rhythm, and it matters to a shipment file because the export tables in it are what Customs and the bank later match against. Two of the three dates below are set by notification rather than by the statute, which is why they have moved before and can move again.

• The outward supplies return. Owed by the registered person under section 37 of the CGST Act. The monthly due date is the eleventh day of the following month as currently notified. We give the day without a notification number, because we could not confirm the notification in force against an official host at the time of writing, and the enabling section allows the date to be changed by notification.
• The summary return and payment. Owed on or before the twentieth day of the month succeeding the month, under rule 61(1)(i) of the CGST Rules. This is the return the export invoice data has to be consistent with, since rule 96A(2) provides that the export invoice details furnished in the outward supplies return are transmitted electronically to the system designated by Customs.
• The per shipment clocks started this month. Not a filing, but the entry that makes the month worth reviewing: every shipping bill filed, every invoice raised under a Letter of Undertaking and every remittance received starts a clock listed in the two sections above.

What is owed every quarter?

The quarterly rhythm is thinner than most published calendars suggest, and that thinness is itself the finding. For a shipment file, the quarter is mostly a review cadence rather than a filing cadence, with one real exception for smaller taxpayers.

• The quarterly summary return. Owed by registered persons in the quarterly scheme, on or before the twenty second day of the month succeeding the quarter for one group of states and union territories, and the twenty fourth day for the other, under rule 61(1)(ii) of the CGST Rules. The rule sets out the two groups by name, so the date depends on where the principal place of business is.
• The scheme review. Not a statutory deadline. Every tariff line you export on, re-read against the schedule in force, because a rate assumed from last quarter is a forecast. Reading a RoDTEP rate as at a date covers how that lookup is actually done.

What is owed once a year?

The annual set is where an EXIM file differs most from an ordinary business file, and where the consequence of missing an item is a stoppage rather than a fee. All four below run on the financial year rather than the calendar year.

• The IEC update. Owed by every IEC holder, electronically, during the April to June period every year, per paragraph 2.05(d) of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023, Chapter 2. Where there is no change, the same paragraph requires that to be confirmed online. Paragraph 2.05(e) provides that an IEC shall be de-activated if it is not updated within the prescribed period, and may be activated again on successful updation.
• The Letter of Undertaking. Owed before the first export of the financial year without payment of integrated tax. Circular No. 8/8/2017-GST dated 04-10-2017 states that the Letter of Undertaking shall be valid for the whole financial year in which it is tendered, and that the facility is deemed withdrawn where the rule 96A(1) time limit is missed and the amount is not paid, and restored if it is paid subsequently.
• The annual scheme return. Owed where the total RoDTEP claim for a given IEC exceeds Rs 1 crore in a financial year. The DGFT RoDTEP annual return help manual states that below Rs 1 crore the return need not be filed, that a return is required for each 8 digit ITC-HS code where the claim on that code is Rs 50 lakh or more, and that separate returns are filed for domestic tariff area exports and for advance authorisation, export oriented unit and special economic zone exports. We do not print a due date, for the reason given below.
• The rate review. Paragraph 4.54 of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 records that efforts would be made to review the RoDTEP rates on an annual basis and to notify them well in advance before the beginning of a financial year. Treat that as a diary entry rather than a guarantee, since the schedule in force has been notified after its own effective date.

What is owed once, and then renewed?

The last rhythm is the one that catches people out, because nothing recurs to remind them. These are artefacts with a validity, and the only date that matters is whether each was valid at the moment of import or export rather than whether it exists in a folder.

• The Importer Exporter Code. Obtained once under paragraph 2.05 of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023, then carried by the annual update above. Paragraph 2.05(f) also allows an IEC to be flagged for scrutiny, with de-activation if the flagged risks are not addressed in time.
• The BIS licence or certificate of conformity behind a quality control order. Held by the manufacturer, including a foreign manufacturer under the Foreign Manufacturers Certification Scheme, and valid at the moment of import. Each order carries its own commencement date and, usually, later dates for small and micro enterprises. The quality control order transition guide reads one such order clause by clause.
• The origin evidence file. Not a certificate with an expiry, but a set of records that has to survive far longer than the consignment. Section 28DA of the Customs Act allows information to be sought within five years from the date of the preferential claim, subject to any shorter limit in the agreement itself.
• The mandatory document set. Paragraph 2.06 of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 lists the mandatory documents for export as the transport document, the commercial invoice cum packing list and the shipping bill or bill of export, and for import as the transport document, the commercial invoice cum packing list and the bill of entry.

Which entries in this calendar are not fully verified?

A calendar that hides its gaps is worse than one with fewer rows, so here is what we could not confirm on 12-08-2026, and why. Publishing this list is the point: it tells you exactly which three lines to check yourself before you rely on them.

• The annual scheme return due date and any late fee. The threshold rules are quoted above from the DGFT help manual. The filing deadline, the extension history and any consequence of late filing sit in a public notice and in the Handbook of Procedures, and neither served a readable text to an automated request. Check the current public notice on the DGFT portal against your own financial year.
• The monthly outward supplies due date. The eleventh is the day currently observed, but the enabling section allows it to be moved by notification, and we did not confirm the notification in force.
• Port and bank registrations. Registrations that an exporter completes once at a port or with an authorised dealer bank are deliberately left out of this calendar rather than described from memory, because we could not verify their governing instrument or renewal rule against an official host.
• Government hosts that refused automated requests. Several official sites answered an automated fetch with an error or served an application shell instead of the document. Where that happened we have named the instrument in the text and given no link, which is the honest form of the citation rather than the convenient one.

Where to go from here

A calendar only helps if the dates it counts from are already captured. Each guide below picks up one row of this page at the point where it is still cheap to act.

• The last clock on the export file. The realisation clock changes on 01-10-2026, and two windows will run in one ledger for about a year.
• The two clocks after the scroll. The two clocks on every RoDTEP claim covers the scrip creation and validity windows that follow the declaration in the shipping bill.
• The import row that costs the most. Half of India's bills of entry get amended, and CBIC's own study says the cause is data quality rather than timing.
• The rows that are decided before you order. What stops a container at the port covers eligibility, trade remedy and origin as purchase order decisions.
• Put a date on your own file. The five free calculators compute the late bill of entry charge, the duty fold, terminal burn, the realisation deadline and the RoDTEP clock.

Purser watches these rules from the shipment record's own dates rather than from a diary, so a window is computed rather than remembered. Purser never submits to a government portal, and it never sends an outbound message without a recorded human approval event. The customs broker still files and the bank still examines: what changes is that the clock was already running somewhere visible. Purser Outbound holds the export side of this calendar and Purser Inbound the import side.

Frequently asked questions

Is there an EXIM specific compliance calendar for India?

There is no widely published EXIM specific compliance calendar for India: searches return general GST, tax deduction and company filing calendars from accounting practices. The shipment deadline set is different, because almost every entry counts from an event on the file, such as the invoice date, the date of export, the date of arrival or the date of remittance, rather than from a fixed day of the month.

When must an Indian IEC be updated each year?

An IEC holder has to update the IEC details electronically every year during the April to June period, and where there are no changes that also has to be confirmed online, under paragraph 2.05(d) of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023. Paragraph 2.05(e) provides that an IEC shall be de-activated if it is not updated within the prescribed period, and that it may be activated again on successful updation.

How long is a Letter of Undertaking valid?

A Letter of Undertaking is valid for the whole financial year in which it is tendered, per Circular No. 8/8/2017-GST dated 04-10-2017. The same circular states that where the goods are not exported within the time in rule 96A(1) of the CGST Rules and the amount due is not paid, the facility of export under a Letter of Undertaking is deemed withdrawn, and is restored if that amount is paid subsequently.

By when must a bill of entry be filed in India?

A bill of entry must be filed before the end of the day, including holidays, preceding the day on which the vessel carrying the goods arrives at the customs port or station where they are to be cleared, under section 46 of the Customs Act as amended by the Finance Act, 2021. Board Circular No. 08/2021-Customs dated 29-03-2021 prescribes different time limits for other modes of transport, and the late filing fee is imposed by the Customs EDI system.

Who has to file the annual RoDTEP return?

An IEC whose total RoDTEP claim exceeds Rs 1 crore in a financial year has to file the annual RoDTEP return, per the DGFT RoDTEP annual return help manual. A return is filed for each 8 digit ITC-HS code carrying Rs 50 lakh or more of claim, and where no single code crosses that threshold, one return is filed for the code with the highest claim. Separate returns are filed for domestic tariff area exports and for advance authorisation, export oriented unit and special economic zone exports.