The Customs Health Check, find the gaps before customs does.
Most businesses cannot say whether their customs is costing them money or building up risk, because no one has reviewed all of it as one. Gaston Schul's Customs Health Check is that review: what it costs, where it is exposed, and a plan to fix it.
CUSTOMS HEALTH CHECK
One clear view of your whole customs operation.
A Customs Health Check is a structured assessment of your customs operation against what the regulations require and what good practice looks like. We review your procedures, controls and records, scan your trade for overpaid duty, recoverable VAT and missed trade-agreement savings, and hand you a written report with findings ranked by priority. It is the entry point to our advisory work, and the fastest way to find out where you stand before customs, or a missed saving, finds out for you.
It is time for a Health Check when one of these sounds familiar.
Your setup grew with the business and no one has checked it as a whole, so you do not know what it is costing or where it is exposed.
You want to know what customs would find before they do, and to walk in able to prove your compliance.
Duty, import VAT or a trade-agreement rate you are not claiming. You think there is money on the table but cannot see where.
A new market, a new supplier, an acquisition or a Brexit-style change, and you need to know the customs and VAT consequences before it goes live.
Your customs knowledge sits with a single person or supplier, and you want an independent view of whether it is right.
AEO, a customs warehouse, special procedures, and you need to be sure you are still meeting the conditions behind them.
HOW IT WORKS
Four steps. From first call to action plan.
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1
Discover
We start with a scoping conversation to understand your trade, your markets and your concerns, and agree what the review will cover.
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2
Plan
We map your customs landscape and set the priorities, so the assessment focuses on where the cost and risk are most likely to sit.
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3
Investigate
We review your procedures, controls, classifications, valuation, origin, authorisations and records, and scan your trade for overpaid duty, recoverable VAT and unclaimed preference.
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4
Report
You receive a written report with findings ranked by priority, the value attached where we can quantify it, and clear next steps you can act on.
WHAT WE CHECK
A genuine review, not a checklist.
The Health Check looks across your whole customs operation. Depending on scope, that includes:
Your customs procedures and work instructions for import and export, your internal controls, and how audit findings are followed up.
Whether commodity codes, customs values and origin are being applied correctly, the three areas where most cost and risk sit.
Whether you are meeting the conditions behind your AEO status, special procedures and any BTI or BOI decisions you rely on
A scan of your trade to find overpaid duty, recoverable import VAT and trade-agreement savings you are not claiming.
Whether your screening and licence checks are doing what they should, and where the gaps are.
Subcontractor agreements, archiving and the administrative obligations that an auditor will expect to see in order
WHAT YOU GET
A plan you can act on, or hand straight to us.
The Health Check ends in a written report you can use, with an action plan that ranks every finding by priority and, where we can quantify it, by value. In our experience the issues a review surfaces are rarely dramatic. They are small, repeated things, a classification that drifted, a relief never claimed, a supplier declaration that lapsed, each quietly costing money or adding risk on every shipment. Seeing them in one place, ranked, is what lets you act on the ones that matter first. And we do not stop at the advice: you decide whether to fix it in-house with the plan, or have us carry out any of it for you.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Where a Health Check usually leads.
Duty Optimisation
Inward and outward processing, warehousing and end-use, the special procedures AEO unlocks, set up to cut your duty.
Tariff Classification
Correct commodity codes underpin your authorisations and your duty, confirmed and reviewed for you.
Trade Agreements & Origin
Prove origin and unlock preferential duty rates, alongside the authorisations that lower your duty.
Trade Compliance
The compliance, screening and controls that keep your AEO conditions met and your trade audit-ready.
Authorisations & Licensing
When you are not meeting the conditions behind an authorisation, we put it right.
VAT & Fiscal Representation
Deferment, postponed import VAT and fiscal setups that work alongside your authorisations.
RESOURCES
Guides & Downloads
Downloadable guides, checklists, insights and tools delivered straight to your mailbox.
Download your Customs Health Check guide
RELATED NEWS
Customs & Trade. Controlled.
Gaston Schul does more than review your customs. We connect it all and run it as one. That is what one full-service operating model gives you, across all your customs and trade in Europe: the clarity to see, the control to govern, and the confidence to decide.
GET STARTED
From health check questions to clear answers.
Tell us a little about your trade and what is prompting the review, and we will set up your Customs Health Check. No obligation, just a clear view of your customs from someone who knows it.
Customs Health Check FAQs
The Customs Health Check: frequently asked questions
It is a structured review of your customs operation: your procedures, controls and records, checked against what the regulations require, plus a scan of your trade for overpaid duty, recoverable VAT and missed trade-agreement savings. You finish with a written report and a prioritised action plan. It is the entry point to our advisory services and a clear, independent picture of where your customs actually stands.
No. A Health Check is a private review done for you, not a customs audit, and nothing we find is reported to an authority. The point is the opposite: to find and fix issues on your terms, before an actual audit does. Knowing where you stand, and acting on it, lowers your exposure rather than raising it.
A Health Check is designed as a rapid diagnostic, not a drawn-out project. The depth scales with your trade volume and the scope we agree, but once we have your data we move quickly and deliver the written report in weeks, not months. The demand on your team stays light: access to your customs data, a few key documents, and a short conversation with the people who run the process. We agree the scope and timeline with you up front at the Discover stage, so you know exactly what to expect before we start.
No. The action plan is yours to keep and use however you like, including in-house or with another provider. Many clients ask us to carry out the priority fixes because we found them and can act on them directly, but that is a choice, not a condition.
No. The Health Check sits alongside whatever clearance arrangements you have today. It reviews how your customs runs regardless of who files your declarations, and the action plan works the same way.
We advise and execute, from inside the customs operation. An accountancy or law firm can review your position on paper; we review the live operation, scan the actual trade data, and can then carry out the fixes, correcting classifications with customs, setting up the relief, recovering the duty. And we are independent, privately owned, with no parent company over us and no outside shareholders, so the review serves you, not a sales target.