Importing a Container: From Purchase Order to Cleared Goods Without Paying Demurrage
A twelve-person home-goods importer in Savannah, Georgia sells hand-carved mango-wood serving boards, and its best-selling line comes from a workshop in Jodhpur. On Monday, 26 October 2026 the buyer releases a purchase order for one 40-foot container, paid by a documentary letter of credit, shipping from Mundra to Savannah. The boards need to be in the Savannah warehouse before the January wholesale shows.
Four dates decide whether that happens cheaply: when the goods are ready, when the supplier's bank documents have to be presented, when US Customs releases the container, and when the terminal starts charging demurrage. Each has its own calculator on this site, and each one feeds the next. The trouble is that they run on four different calendars (an Indian factory's, an Indian bank's, US Customs', and a carrier's tariff), and a slip at the first step quietly moves all the others.
The plan as drawn in October, and what it became
| Milestone | Original plan | After the Diwali closure |
|---|---|---|
| PO released | Mon 26 Oct | Mon 26 Oct |
| Ready to ship at the workshop | Wed 11 Nov | Wed 18 Nov |
| Gated in at Mundra | Fri 13 Nov | Fri 20 Nov |
| On board (bill of lading date) | Tue 17 Nov | Tue 24 Nov |
| Last day to present documents | Tue 8 Dec | Tue 15 Dec (after amendment) |
| Discharged at Savannah | Mon 14 Dec | Mon 21 Dec |
| Customs release (no exam / exam) | Wed 16 Dec / Mon 21 Dec | Wed 23 Dec / Tue 29 Dec |
| Last free day at the terminal (working-day / calendar-day tariff) | Mon 21 Dec / Sat 19 Dec | Tue 29 Dec / Sat 26 Dec |
The sailing and arrival dates come from the forwarder's booking and the carrier's schedule, not from a calculator. Everything else in the table comes from the tools below.
Step 1: the supplier's two legs
The workshop quotes 12 working days to finish, pack and fumigate, then two working days by road to Mundra. The Purchase Order Lead-Time calculator takes those as two separate legs. With the PO released on 2026-10-26, lead time 12, transit 2, country India, it returns ready to ship Nov 11, 2026, goods receipted Friday, November 13, 2026, 18 calendar days door to door. Here "receipted" means gated in at the port, because the second leg we entered is the truck to Mundra, not the ocean voyage.
Two days after the PO goes out, the workshop emails its festival notice: closed Monday 9 to Friday 13 November for Diwali. The tool's India calendar holds only three national holidays (Republic Day, Independence Day and Gandhi Jayanti), so festival closures, which vary by state and by employer, have to be typed in. Add 2026-11-09 through 2026-11-13 to the custom holidays field and the answer moves a full week: ready Nov 18, gated in Friday, November 20, 2026, 25 calendar days door to door.
One more trap at this step. Leave the country on the default US and the tool skips Veterans Day (Wednesday 11 November) and returns ready Nov 12, gated in Monday 16 November. That holiday means nothing in Jodhpur. The supplier leg runs on the supplier's calendar, so pick the factory's. The transit leg here is an Indian truck, so it stays on the same calendar, which is the tool's default; for a leg that ran on another country's roads you would pick that country as the receiving calendar.
Step 2: the letter of credit, before the ship sails
The importer's bank opened the credit in October with three dates written into it: latest shipment date 20 November 2026, expiry 10 December 2026, and presentation within 21 days of shipment. Those three were set from the original plan, and the Diwali week breaks two of them.
The first problem is not a presentation question at all. The earliest sailing after the container gates in on 20 November loads on Tuesday 24 November. A bill of lading dated 24 November against a latest shipment date of 20 November is a discrepancy on its face, and the bank can refuse the documents for it. The buyer needs to ask its bank for an amendment before the vessel sails, extending the latest shipment date (here to 30 November) and the expiry (here to 31 December). The beneficiary has to accept the amendment, so the supplier's side needs a few days of notice too.
Now the presentation clock. UCP 600 article 14(c) says a presentation including original transport documents must be made "not later than 21 calendar days after the date of shipment", and "in any event not later than the expiry date of the credit". The Letters of Credit Presentation Clock counts that from the on-board date, in calendar days by default, and rolls a deadline that lands on a closed banking day forward to the next one, which is the article 29(a) rule. With 2026-11-24, 21 days, calendar, India selected (the documents are presented at the nominated bank in India), it returns Tuesday, December 15, 2026. For the original plan, on board 17 November, it returned Tuesday, December 8, 2026.
Here is why the expiry matters as much as the 21 days. Without the amendment, the expiry stays 10 December, and since presentation must happen by the earlier of the two, the supplier would have only 16 days after loading, not 21, to get the full set of documents to the bank. The calculator does not know your expiry date. Compute the 21-day date, then take whichever is earlier: that date, the expiry, or any shorter period the credit itself states.
Leave the "business days" box unticked. Tick it and the same inputs return Wednesday, December 23, 2026, eight days past the real deadline. UCP 600 says calendar days, and the tool's default follows it. The India holiday list also matters less than it looks: it only contains the three national days, and Indian banks close on further state holidays, so if the last day lands near a regional holiday, ask the nominated bank whether it is open. The site's post on the 21-day presentation clock covers the single-step rules in more detail, and the 2017 English Commercial Court judgment in Deutsche Bank v CIMB quotes articles 14(c) and 29(a) in full.
A US filing deadline sits at the same moment. Under 19 CFR 149.2(b), most Importer Security Filing data must reach CBP no later than 24 hours before the cargo is laden at the foreign port. When the sailing moved from 17 to 24 November, the ISF deadline moved with it. Tell the customs broker the new loading date on the day you learn it.
Step 3: arrival, and the overlap people miss
The carrier's schedule puts the vessel alongside at Savannah on Monday 21 December, with the container available from Tuesday 22 December. The broker has pre-filed the entry and quotes two business days for a release with no exam, five if CBP selects the box for examination.
The Customs Clearance Date Estimator adds business days on the importing country's calendar. From 2026-12-21, country US: two days returns Wednesday, December 23, 2026; five days returns Tuesday, December 29, 2026. The five-day case lands eight calendar days after arrival because it crosses a weekend and Christmas Day on Friday 25 December.
The mistake to avoid is treating the demurrage clock as starting after clearance. It starts when the container is available at the terminal, which is the day after discharge here, and it runs while Customs is still deciding. Clearance and free time overlap; they do not queue.
Step 4: free time and the first billable day
The carrier's tariff, as incorporated in the importer's service contract, grants four free days. The Customs Demurrage Penalty Tracker takes the availability date and the free days, with a switch for calendar or working days. From 2026-12-22, four days, US calendar:
- Calendar days: last free day Saturday, December 26, 2026. Calendar free time runs straight through the weekend and Christmas Day, and the tool flags that the last free day is a Saturday.
- Working days: last free day Tuesday, December 29, 2026, counting the 23rd, 24th, 28th and 29th.
Lay that against the clearance dates. With no exam, the box is released on Wednesday 23 December and there are at least three working days (the 23rd, 24th and 28th) to get a truck under it on the working-day reading, and on the calendar reading only the 23rd and 24th, unless the terminal gate opens on Boxing Day. With an exam, the release comes on Tuesday 29 December. On the working-day tariff that is the last free day itself, so collection has to be the same day. On the calendar tariff the 29th is the third billable day, and the container accrues demurrage until a truck collects it.
Check which way your tariff counts. Most US tariffs count free time only on working or gate-open days, which is the working-day reading. A calendar-day tariff charges straight through weekends and holidays: the last free day is Saturday 26 December, the terminal's gate hours that weekend decide whether collection is even possible, and in practice the box needs to leave on Thursday 24 December. A few tariffs extend calendar free time that ends on a non-working day; the tracker has a box for that (it gives Monday 28 December), but tick it only if the tariff text says so. The site's demurrage start-date post has more on how the start date is set.
How one late week travelled down the chain
The Diwali closure moved the ready date by five working days. Everything downstream inherited that week, but not evenly:
- At the bank, it pushed shipment past a date written into the credit. A late PO is an inconvenience; a bill of lading after the latest shipment date is a payment risk for the supplier, and a likely refusal or waiver request for the buyer.
- At Savannah, it moved arrival from the week before Christmas into Christmas week. In the original plan, a five-day exam case cleared Monday 21 December, the last free day on a working-day tariff (on a calendar tariff free time had ended on Saturday 19 December). After the slip, the exam case clears on the 29th: again the last free day on a working-day tariff, and three days into demurrage on a calendar one.
- Nothing about the ocean voyage changed. The whole extra exposure came from calendars at each end.
What these calculators leave to you
- Sailing and arrival. No tool here predicts vessel schedules, rollovers or port congestion. Use the carrier's schedule and update it.
- The credit's own dates. The presentation clock knows nothing about your expiry or latest shipment date. Read them off the credit and compare.
- Regional closures. The India list is three national holidays. Festival shutdowns and state bank holidays go in by hand where a tool accepts custom dates; the clearance estimator does not.
- Detention and storage. The tracker covers demurrage only. Detention on the empty container's return, terminal storage and chassis charges run on their own clocks.
- Exam outcome. Whether CBP examines a container is not predictable from a calendar. Plan both cases.
Checklist for the next container
- Run the PO tool on the supplier's country, and ask for festival and shutdown dates before you release the order, not after.
- When the ready date moves, check it against the credit's latest shipment date the same day and request any amendment before loading.
- Run the presentation clock in calendar days from the on-board date, then take the earlier of that and the expiry.
- Give the broker the confirmed loading date for the ISF.
- Run clearance in two cases, no exam and exam, from the arrival date.
- Run free time from availability, in the unit your tariff uses, and compare the exam case to the last free day.
- Book the truck against the earlier of the two last-free-day readings if you are not sure which convention applies.
General information about trade-finance and port timing arithmetic, not legal or financial advice. Letter of credit terms, carrier tariffs and customs requirements govern your shipment; confirm each date with your bank, broker, carrier and terminal before relying on it.