ACE Portal Trade Activity Reports: How to Pull the Data CBP Already Has on Your Imports

Most importers log into the ACE Portal to file entries, check bond activity, or respond to CBP requests. Very few use it the way experienced trade professionals do: as a live database of every dollar their company has paid in duties, fees, and tariff surcharges. That distinction matters enormously right now, when billions of dollars in IEEPA tariff refunds are available but the filing deadlines are fixed and approaching fast.

If you are trying to quantify your IEEPA tariff refund exposure before connecting with a specialist, the ACE Portal trade activity reports are the most direct source of that information. Here is how to find them, what they contain, and how to interpret what you are looking at.

What Are ACE Portal Trade Activity Reports?

ACE, which stands for Automated Commercial Environment, is CBP's centralized system for processing trade transactions. Every formal entry your company files generates a data record in ACE. Over time, those records accumulate into a detailed transaction history tied to your Employer Identification Number and your importer of record status.

Trade activity reports are a built-in reporting function within the ACE portal that lets authorized users extract structured summaries of that transaction history. These are not raw data dumps. They are pre-formatted outputs that organize your entry summaries, duty payments, HTS classification codes, country of origin data, and port-of-entry information into a format you can filter, sort, and analyze.

The reports are accessible through the ACE Secure Data Portal at ace.cbp.dhs.gov. You must have an active ACE account with the appropriate account type and access level. Importers who access ACE directly typically use an Importer account. Customs brokers and trade professionals who manage multiple accounts use Trade account types with delegated access.

Which Report Types Are Most Useful for Duty Recovery Analysis?

ACE offers several report categories. For importers focused on identifying tariff overpayments and supporting a potential IEEPA tariff refund claim, three report types are especially relevant.

Entry Summary Reports

Entry summary reports pull the core data from your CBP Form 7501 filings. Each line item on an entry summary corresponds to a distinct HTS classification, and each carries a recorded duty rate, entered value, and calculated duty amount. For IEEPA refund analysis, you are looking for lines coded with IEEPA-specific chapter 99 HTS provisions, which were added as secondary classifications when the tariffs were imposed.

Running an entry summary report for the period from February 2025 through the present will surface every entry that may have included IEEPA tariff charges. You can filter by country of origin to isolate entries from China, Canada, Mexico, and other countries subject to specific IEEPA tariff actions.

Duty and Fee Payment Reports

These reports aggregate the actual cash payments CBP received from your company, matched to the corresponding entry numbers. Unlike entry summary reports, which show what was declared, duty and fee payment reports confirm what was actually collected. That distinction matters when entries have had post-summary corrections applied or when liquidation changed the originally declared amounts.

For refund claim preparation, the liquidated duty amount is the controlling figure. Payment reports help you reconcile what you declared against what CBP finalized, which is critical for calculating accurate refund amounts.

HTS Classification and Country of Origin Reports

These reports let you see your full commodity and sourcing profile across a date range. If you import the same product from multiple countries, these reports will show you how entry volume and duty charges break down by country. That breakdown is directly relevant to refund eligibility because IEEPA tariffs were imposed on a country-by-country basis and have different deadline structures depending on origin.

How to Access and Run These Reports in ACE

Log into ACE at ace.cbp.dhs.gov using your credentials. From the main navigation, locate the Reports section. ACE uses a report-building interface where you select the report type, define the date range, and apply filters before running the output.

For IEEPA tariff refund analysis, set your date range to begin no earlier than February 1, 2025, which is when the first IEEPA tariff actions were issued. Apply country-of-origin filters based on where your goods originate. If you source from China, Canada, or Mexico, those entries are subject to the earlier February 4, 2027 refund filing deadline. Entries involving goods from countries subject to reciprocal tariffs fall under the April 5, 2027 deadline.

Export the output to CSV or Excel format. That allows you to sort by HTS code, identify the chapter 99 secondary codes that signal IEEPA tariff charges, and sum the duty amounts across entries. The resulting figure is a working estimate of your maximum refund exposure before any eligibility adjustments.

Common Problems Importers Encounter with ACE Report Data

ACE report data reflects what was filed and what CBP processed. It does not automatically flag errors, misclassifications, or missed exclusion claims. If your broker filed entries with incorrect HTS codes, those errors will appear in the reports as if they are correct. Identifying those problems requires comparing the reported classifications against the actual goods, which is a task that benefits from professional customs classification expertise.

ACE also does not separate refundable IEEPA amounts from non-refundable duty components in a single dashboard view. A single entry line may include a base tariff rate, a Section 301 rate, and an IEEPA rate stacked together. Isolating the IEEPA portion requires drilling into the chapter 99 coding, not just reading the total duty column.

Additionally, access permission issues are common. If your company's ACE account has lapsed, if a former broker was the primary account holder, or if your account type does not include reporting permissions, you may need to contact CBP's trade account management team at 1-571-468-5000 to restore or escalate access before you can run these reports.

Using Your ACE Data to Support a CAPE Portal Refund Claim

The CAPE portal is CBP's dedicated intake system for IEEPA tariff refund claims following the February 2026 Supreme Court ruling that found IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional. Claims filed through CAPE must identify the specific entry numbers, the IEEPA-coded HTS lines, and the duty amounts being claimed for each entry. That is exactly the information your ACE trade activity reports produce.

In practice, specialists who file CAPE claims use ACE data as the foundation of their claim packages. The entry numbers, liquidated duty amounts, and HTS codes drawn from ACE reports become the core of the structured claim submission. Getting your ACE data organized now shortens the timeline from engagement to claim filing, which matters when deadlines are fixed.

Start with Your Data, Then Connect with a Specialist

Pulling your ACE trade activity reports is the right first step for any importer who wants to understand their tariff refund exposure before committing to a recovery process. The data is yours, it is already in CBP's system, and the reports are free to run. What the reports will not do is interpret the results, file the claim, or manage the CBP correspondence that follows.

Tarisol connects U.S. importers with the Tariff Refund Agency, a licensed specialist that handles the full CAPE portal filing process on a success-based fee structure with no upfront cost. If you have run your ACE reports and want to know what your numbers actually mean for your refund eligibility, check your eligibility with Tarisol today. With roughly 93.5% of eligible importers still unfiled and deadlines as close as February 4, 2027, the time to act is now.