Determine how to submit Commercial Accounting Declarations (CAD) and related filings to CBSA's CARM system via API versus the CARM Client Portal

Steps

1. Register your business/organization in the CARM Client Portal (CCP) and complete the required onboarding as a Trade Chain Partner before any API or EDI connection can be authorized.
2. Review the CARM API Inventory published via the CCP developer resource to see which transactions currently support programmatic submission — for example, the Commercial Accounting Declaration (CAD) and the Bond API for financial security providers.
3. Decide whether your CAD submissions will go through direct API/EDI integration or manual entry via the CCP web interface — both are supported, but production API access still requires portal-based registration and CBSA approval, the same as EDI.
4. For Release Prior to Payment (RPP) participation, confirm your financial security/bond is active before relying on API-submitted CADs, since duty/tax deferral depends on an approved bond.
5. Build in reconciliation logic to receive duty/tax calculation results back via API/EDI or by polling the CCP portal, since CARM automatically calculates amounts owed from your submitted CAD data.