How to Generate Your First eBRC After Connecting DGFT
Connecting DGFT is the only setup an eBRC account needs. Everything after it is the same four steps, every time. This is that walkthrough, written for the first one.
What connecting DGFT actually changed
Before the connection, finding a remittance was your job. You went looking for it, on a portal, usually at the end of a quarter when a claim deadline was already close.
After it, the remittances come to you. Your bank reports each inward payment to DGFT, and your repository fills up on its own. That is the whole of the setup. There is no second connection to make, no configuration screen to find, and nothing to switch on.
If yours is not connected yet, create an account and connect DGFT first. It is free, it takes a few minutes, and everything below assumes it is done.
Have these three things in front of you
It goes quickly when you are not hunting for paperwork halfway through. For each certificate you will want:
- The invoice the payment covers.
- The shipping bill for goods. Have its number, date and port code to hand, or read them off the PDF. For services, the invoice or SOFTEX reference stands in its place.
- Any deductions that were actually taken before the money reached you: commission, discount, insurance, freight, or other. If none were taken, there is nothing to declare.
That last one is where first-time filings most often stall. The figure that matters is what was deducted in reality, not what the contract allowed for.
The four steps
1. Basic details
The branch the invoice was raised from, and what kind of export this was. If you file from the same branch each time, save it as a profile once and it fills itself in from then on.
2. Choose the remittance
Your remittances carry a status, and it decides what you can do with each one. Fresh is ready to certify. Amended means your bank revised it after reporting, so read it again before you map it. Cancelled was withdrawn and should not be mapped at all. Each entry also shows how much of it is still unused, which matters when one payment covers more than one invoice.
3. Map it to the export
This is the actual work, and it is one question: which export did this money pay for? Point the remittance at its invoice and shipping bill, then declare the deductions where they belong.
A payment does not have to be used up in one go. If it covers part of an invoice, or covers several, map what applies now and the remainder stays available for the next certificate.
4. Check and submit
A summary of everything you have entered, and a declaration to confirm. Nothing is generated until you confirm it, so this is the point to read it back rather than the point to hurry.
What happens after you submit
We run the validation before anything goes to DGFT, so the errors that would have come back as a rejection are caught while you can still fix them. Once submitted, the certificate is usually back in about two hours.
You do not have to sit and watch it. The status view shows where each request is, and finished certificates land in your reports, where you can search them and download a copy whenever an auditor or a claim needs one.
When you have more than a handful
One at a time is right for the first one, because it shows you what each field is for. It is the wrong tool for a backlog. Bulk upload takes many certificates in a single file instead, and we have written that workflow up separately in the bulk eBRC spreadsheet workflow.
Try it without generating one
Test mode runs the same validation and tells you what it found, without generating a real certificate. It is worth one pass before a big batch, and it costs nothing to be wrong in it.
When something does not line up
- The remittance is not there. Banks report on their own schedule, so a recent payment may simply not have arrived yet. Why an IRM is not showing covers the reasons and what is worth doing about each.
- The amount is short. Deductions explain most gaps. Declare what was actually taken and the figures reconcile.
- Your bank amended it. Read the revised entry before mapping. An amendment usually means a corrected amount or purpose.
If it is none of those, write to us. A remittance that will not reconcile is usually a five minute answer, and guessing at it is how a claim window gets missed.
Starting from scratch
If you have read this far without an account, the whole of the setup is the one connection this page opens with. Create an account, connect DGFT, and your remittances start arriving on their own. What exporters get covers the rest of it, including what happens once you are filing at volume.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to log in to the DGFT portal to generate one?
No. Connecting your DGFT account once is what makes that unnecessary. After that you generate them from your own workspace, and the certificate comes back the same way.
How long does a certificate take?
Usually about two hours after submission. You do not need to wait on the screen; the status view and your reports both reflect it when it lands.
Can one remittance cover several invoices?
Yes. Map what applies to each certificate and the unused balance stays available for the next one.
What if I make a mistake?
Nothing is generated until you confirm the declaration on the last step, so a mistake caught before that is simply an edit. Test mode exists for exactly this reason: run one through it and read what validation says before you file for real.