CAPE Portal: Technical Issues Reported in First Week of IEEPA Refund Filing

CAPE portal technical issues in its first week: ACH delays, CSV rejections, and load problems — plus how to work around each.

The CAPE portal has been open for less than a week, and importers are already reporting a range of technical difficulties that are delaying filings and creating uncertainty about claim status.

ACH Validation Delays

The most widely reported issue is a delay in validating ACH banking profiles for importers who added banking information close to the portal’s April 20 launch date. Importers who added ACH profiles in the days before the portal opened are reporting that their profiles show as “pending validation” in ACE — preventing CAPE claim submission.

CBP has acknowledged the issue and indicated it is prioritizing ACH validation queue processing. Importers affected should check ACE daily for updated ACH status.

Workaround: If you haven’t yet added your ACH profile, add it immediately. The queue appears to be processing at scale, and profiles added now may clear faster than those submitted on April 20 when volume was highest.

CSV Rejection for Encoding Issues

Multiple customs brokers reported that CAPE declarations uploaded as standard Excel CSVs are being rejected with format errors, even when the column headers and data appear correct. Investigation revealed the culprit: Excel’s CSV export on Windows computers includes a BOM (byte order mark) character at the start of the file that CBP’s CAPE validator doesn’t accept.

Fix: After preparing your CSV in Excel, save it as “CSV UTF-8” and open it in a plain text editor before uploading. Verify the file doesn’t start with invisible characters. Alternatively, prepare the CSV in Google Sheets and download as plain CSV.

Load Issues on Launch Day

The portal experienced significant slowdowns on April 20, as large numbers of importers and customs brokers attempted to access ACE simultaneously. Most users reported resolution within 24-48 hours.

No Rejections for Substantive Claim Errors Yet

There have been no widespread reports of CAPE claims being rejected for substantive errors (wrong entry numbers, incorrect IEEPA codes, etc.) — suggesting CBP’s initial processing queue for format-compliant filings is moving as intended. The issues are primarily at the submission stage, not the review stage.

What Importers Should Do Now

If you haven’t yet filed, don’t let portal issues discourage you from moving forward
Verify ACH status before submitting
Use the CSV encoding fix described above
File as soon as possible — the 80-day window for recently-liquidated entries continues to count down

For detailed filing guidance, see our CAPE portal explained article and our common filing mistakes guide.