Guide · updated 28 October 2026

Entry Type 13 for international mail: the deadline moved to 20 January 2027

The short answer: on 14 October 2026 CBP extended the mandatory compliance date for the new Entry Type 13 process for international mail from 22 October 2026 to 20 January 2027 — a 90-day extension. Most pages describing this requirement still carry the October date. Nothing changes in the procedure before 20 January 2027, and filers are encouraged to use Entry Type 13 voluntarily in the meantime.

What Entry Type 13 is

Entry Type 13 is CBP's new electronic informal entry process for international postal shipments. Instead of arriving with paper or no advance data, qualifying mail shipments have to be filed electronically in ACE through Entry Type 13. If a shipment falls in scope and is not filed that way, the fallback is not "carry on as before" — it is formal entry, a materially more expensive and slower process.

Who is in scope from 20 January 2027

Two independent triggers put a postal shipment in scope:

1. Duty liability: shipments subject to Section 201, 232 or 301 duties.
2. Agency jurisdiction: shipments of goods under any Partner Government Agency's jurisdiction — which includes every CPSC-regulated consumer product, FDA-regulated items, and the rest of the PGA list.

So a low-value parcel of children's toys or a small kitchen appliance arriving by post is in scope on the PGA trigger alone, whether or not any duty is owed.

Where the requirement comes from

• 24 June 2026 — Interim Final Rule, Indefinite Suspension of the De Minimis Exemption for Mail Shipments and New Postal Informal Entry Process, and the Federal Register notice Test of the New Electronic Entry Process for Mail.
• 8 October 2026 — Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Low-Value Shipments, proposing the new entry and data requirements for the informal entry of all international mail packages except letters and flats.
• 14 October 2026 — CBP national media release extending mandatory Entry Type 13 use to 20 January 2027.

CBP's stated aim is to bring international mail into parity with every other cargo mode and to use advance electronic data to identify unsafe or illegal shipments before they reach US communities.

How Entry Type 13 meets CPSC eFiling

These are two separate requirements that collide on the same parcel. Entry Type 13 is the entry mechanism; CPSC eFiling is the certificate data that has to travel with it. Since 8 July 2026 CPSC has required eFiling of certificate data for covered imports, and its guidance for mail is to enter that data into CPSC's Product Registry before the shipment arrives.

There is one gap worth knowing. In CSMS #69382435 (29 July 2026) CPSC confirmed that ACE can accept an entry with no CPSC message set, or with parts of it missing, as long as the overall CATAIR PGA specification is followed. CBP will therefore not reject the entry. That is not permission to skip the filing: CPSC may respond in an SO message, reject the CPSC data, and take enforcement action on any entry that lacks required eFiling data. CBP not rejecting the entry is not the same as the filing being optional. Questions go to efilingsupport@cpsc.gov.

What to do before 20 January 2027

1. Ask whoever handles your postal inbound — broker, consolidator, postal consolidator, 3PL — whether they can file Entry Type 13 today, and get it in writing rather than on a call.
2. Identify which of your SKUs travel by international mail and fall under a PGA. For anything CPSC-regulated, that is all of them.
3. Test in the voluntary window. The process is available now; discovering a data mapping error on 19 January is the expensive way to learn.
4. Confirm the CPSC certificate data — including the Product Registry route for mail — is being produced by your own systems, not improvised by the filer at the border.
5. Assume formal entry as the default fallback cost if nothing is filed. Price it once; it is usually enough to justify the integration work.

Related

CPSC eFiling: what importers file, and the 2027 deadline — the certificate side, including the 8 January 2027 foreign trade zone date.
Children's Product Certificate (CPC) checklist — what has to be on the certificate the entry data comes from.
How to check if a product has been recalled — the four official databases.
Section 15(b): the 24-hour duty to report a defect — who must tell CPSC, and when the clock starts.
Dresser tip-over recalls: 11 in 90 days — the compliance failure behind 11 of the 146 notices in that window.
When a supplier's product is recalled, who pays? — what a recall costs a seller.

Questions

Start monitoring — $49/monthRead a sample brief