How to Check Entry Liquidation Status in ACE (and Why It Gates Your 180-Day Protest Deadline)

Your CFO or your counsel just told you the company's IEEPA refund depends on "whether each entry has liquidated and when," and asked you to go find out. So you log into ACE, and you are staring at a wall of ES-00x reports with no obvious "liquidation status" answer, a courtesy email your broker forwarded, and a deadline you have heard is "180 days from liquidation" but cannot tie to any date you can see. This guide shows you how to pull the status, how to read every value ACE returns, and, most importantly, why the date you calendar off decides whether a six-figure protest window is still open or already gone.

To check entry liquidation status in ACE, run the ES-003 report with the Liquidation Status and Liquidation Date fields added, then read each entry's value against the liquidation ladder: unliquidated, liquidated, liquidated by operation of law, extended, suspended, protested, or finally liquidated. The single most costly mistake is calendaring off the courtesy notice (the broker's email) instead of the electronic posting on CBP's public bulletin, which is the only legal notice and the date your strict 180-day protest clock actually runs from.

Primary sources: 19 CFR 159.9 (notice and date of liquidation) and CBP's Official Notice of Extension, Suspension and Liquidation bulletin. Both are linked throughout and listed in full under References.

This is the read-the-status step of the broader IEEPA refund journey. It sits between finding your affected entries and deciding what to file: once you know each entry's status and its real liquidation date, the deadline and channel decisions become mechanical. I am scoping this post tightly to that one job, checking the status and decoding every value, and pointing you to the neighboring guides for the decisions that follow.

Which ACE report shows entry liquidation status, and how do I run it?

The ES-003 report (Entry Summary Line Tariff Details) is the report that carries liquidation status per line, and it is the same workhorse report you use to size IEEPA duty. The catch is that ACE does not show liquidation status by default. You have to add it.

Here is the sequence. The exact folder names vary by account permissions, so treat the tree as a guide and look for the report by name if your path differs.

1. Log into the ACE Portal and select your Importer account. Liquidation data follows the importer of record, so you must be in the Importer view, not a broker or ABI-filer view.
2. Go to Reports, then open ES-003 under the Entry Summary folder. Some accounts route through an Importer or Revenue subfolder first. If you do not see Entry Summary, look for the ES-003 name directly.
3. Before you run it, add the Liquidation Status and Liquidation Date fields from the column picker. This is the step everyone skips. Run ES-003 without them and you get duty detail but no lane, and a clean-looking report silently hides the one field that tells you which deadline is running.
4. Set your date range and run the report. For an IEEPA refund pull, that window is February 4, 2025 through February 24, 2026; for a general liquidation check, set the range that covers the entries you care about.
5. Export to Excel or CSV, then sort by Liquidation Status. Sorting in a spreadsheet is the only sane way to bucket a book of entries by status.

That is the entire free method, and every importer of record can do it. This post assumes you already have ACE access; if you do not, start with requesting ACE Portal access for an IEEPA refund, then come back. And if your real goal is finding which entries carried IEEPA duty and how much, that is a companion job covered in how to pull the ES-003 report to find your IEEPA entries; here I am zoomed in on the liquidation status field and what its values mean.

GingerControl is a trade compliance AI platform that helps importers, exporters, and customs brokers classify products, simulate tariff costs, and track policy changes, but reading one entry's liquidation status in ACE is free and something you should do yourself, so let me stay on the manual method.

What do the ACE liquidation status values mean?

ACE returns one of a fixed set of status values, and each one tells you a different thing about your next action and your deadline. I call this the liquidation status ladder, because reading a status is really about knowing which rung you are on and which clock is running from it.

Here are the values you will see, verbatim as ACE labels them, and what each one means for you.

ACE liquidation status	What it means	What it tells you to do
Open / Unliquidated	CBP has not finalized the duties; they are not yet fixed	Clock to final has not started, but check the date of entry (see the deemed-liquidation trap below)
Liquidated	CBP has fixed the duties on the entry	The 180-day protest clock is running from the posted liquidation date
Liquidated by Operation of Law	Deemed liquidated because CBP did not act within the statutory window	A real liquidation date exists even though CBP never affirmatively acted; the clock is running
Extended Liquidation	CBP extended the period before final liquidation	Not yet liquidated; monitor for the eventual liquidation date
Suspended Liquidation	Liquidation is suspended, often pending litigation or an order	Stays open until the suspension is lifted; the clock to final has not started
Protested	A protest is on file against the liquidation	The protest is in CBP's hands; watch for the decision
Finally Liquidated	The liquidation decision is final	The protest window is closed; litigation is the remaining path

Two of these values trip people up more than the rest: "unliquidated" (which people wrongly read as "safe") and the gap between the courtesy notice and the legal notice (which decides which date you calendar). I cover both traps next, because they are where refunds quietly die.

The status list is durable statutory plumbing, but the strategic weight each value carries shifted in 2026, because IEEPA turned a routine housekeeping field into a money-recovery gate. GingerControl's IEEPA Refund Recovery service reads liquidation-status-driven eligibility and the protest deadline off exactly these values, which is why getting the read right matters.

Why the courtesy notice is not your deadline (the notice trap)

The single most expensive mistake in this whole exercise is calendaring your 180-day protest deadline off the courtesy notice, the ES-701 or the email your broker forwards, instead of the official electronic posting. They are not the same document, and only one of them is legal notice.

The rule is explicit. Under 19 CFR 159.9, the notice of liquidation "will be dated with the date it is posted electronically on www.cbp.gov," and "this electronic posting will be deemed the legal evidence of liquidation." The courtesy notice, by contrast, "will serve as an informal, courtesy notice and not as a direct, formal, and decisive notice of liquidation." In plain terms: the posting is the legal event; the email is a favor.

Why does the distinction cost money? Because your protest deadline runs from the legal date. Under 19 U.S.C. 1514(c)(3), a protest must be filed "within 180 days after but not before the date of liquidation or reliquidation." That date is the posted date, not the day the courtesy email happened to arrive, which can be days later, can go to a stale distribution list, or can never arrive at all. Teams that build their deadline calendar from broker emails are calendaring off the wrong event, and the gap between the two dates is exactly the gap that forecloses a protest.

The legal notice lives on CBP's electronic liquidation bulletin, the Official Notice of Extension, Suspension and Liquidation. It is updated daily, is searchable by filer code or by date, and postings stay online for 15 months. When you need the authoritative liquidation date for a deadline calculation, that bulletin, not the ES-701 and not the broker's spreadsheet, is the source of truth.

Does unliquidated mean my clock hasn't started? (the deemed-liquidation trap)

No, not reliably. "Unliquidated" feels safe, and often it is, but it does not guarantee that no liquidation date exists or that no clock is running. This is the second trap, and it is the mirror image of the first: the first is calendaring off the wrong date, this one is assuming there is no date at all.

The reason is deemed liquidation, also called liquidation by operation of law. Under 19 CFR 159.11, "an entry not liquidated within one year from the date of entry of the merchandise will be deemed liquidated by operation of law at the rate of duty, value, quantity, and amount of duties asserted by the importer of record." In other words, if CBP simply never gets around to liquidating your entry, the law liquidates it for them at the one-year mark, at the numbers you filed, and that creates a real liquidation date with a real 180-day clock attached.

That window can be extended, but not indefinitely. Under 19 CFR 159.12, CBP may extend the one-year period "for an additional period not to exceed 1 year" at a time, and "the total time for which extensions may be granted may not exceed 3 years." An entry not liquidated within four years of the date of entry is deemed liquidated by operation of law. That is the outer boundary: one year default, four years maximum with extensions.

The practical takeaway for reading your ES-003: do not treat "unliquidated" as a permanent green light. Check the date of entry on each unliquidated line. An entry that shows "unliquidated" but entered eleven months ago is about to have a clock, and if you assume it is safe you can be surprised by a liquidation, or a deemed liquidation, you never calendared. The status field tells you today's state; the date of entry tells you what is coming.

How does liquidation status route my IEEPA refund? (the status-to-channel map)

Once you can read a status and trust the date behind it, the status tells you which refund channel each entry can still use, and which deadline attaches. I call this the status-to-channel routing map, because a single liquidation status effectively assigns each entry to a lane before its clock runs out.

Liquidation status / timing	Refund channel it permits (IEEPA)	Deadline that attaches
Open / Unliquidated	CAPE Phase 1, or a PSC while still open	Before liquidation
Liquidated, within ~80 days	CAPE Phase 1 (reliquidates the next business day)	~80 days for CAPE; 180 days for protest
Liquidated, ~81 to 180 days out	Protest under 19 U.S.C. 1514	180 days from the posted liquidation date
Finally liquidated / past 180 days	CIT litigation (see the Phase 3 caveat below)	Per CIT rules
Extended / Suspended	Wait; the refund issues on the eventual liquidation	Monitor for the liquidation date

A few facts pin the timing. CBP deployed CAPE Phase 1 on April 20, 2026 (CSMS #68340863), and per that bulletin the system is limited to certain unliquidated entries and certain entries within 80 days of liquidation; it rejects entries over 80 days past the liquidation date. That 80-day CAPE cutoff runs independently of the 180-day protest clock, which is why a single entry can be inside the protest window but already outside CAPE.

As of July 2026, CAPE Phase 3, which would cover finally-liquidated entries, is reported to be on track for the end of July, but the government continues to contest the legal basis for refunding finally-liquidated entries. In early June 2026 the Department of Justice appealed the CIT's refund order to the Federal Circuit, and the government has indicated that Phase 3 refunds would process only for importers who filed suit at the CIT. Treat "finally liquidated" as a contested lane, not a settled one, and do not rely on Phase 3 covering an entry you could still protect with a timely protest.

That is where this post hands off. Turning a status and a date into the actual filing decision, protest, CAPE, PSC, or both, is the job of two neighbors: the 180-day liquidation deadline guide for the deadline strategy and the Form 19 boilerplate, and the CAPE vs protest vs PSC decision guide for choosing a channel given a status. When it is time to actually file the paperwork, how to file a customs protest covers the mechanics. This post's job ends at "you now know your status and your deadline."

Common ways the status check goes wrong

A liquidation-status check can run cleanly and still mislead you. These are the failure modes I see most often, each one a way a report that looks fine quietly hands you the wrong answer.

1. You calendared off the courtesy notice. The ES-701 or the broker email is informal; only the electronic posting on the CBP bulletin is legal notice (19 CFR 159.9). Fix: pull the posted date from the liquidation bulletin for any deadline calculation.
2. You assumed unliquidated means no clock. Deemed liquidation at one year (four years with extensions) creates a real date even when CBP never acts (19 CFR 159.11 and 159.12). Fix: check the date of entry on unliquidated lines.
3. You trusted the broker's spreadsheet over ACE. The importer of record signs for the entry and bears reasonable-care liability under 19 U.S.C. 1484; broker status fields drift. Fix: verify against ACE, and if you need to audit what the broker filed, see the broker entry data reconciliation guide.
4. You ran ES-003 without adding the status columns. Liquidation Status and Liquidation Date are off by default, so the report looks complete but hides the lane. Fix: add both from the column picker before you run.
5. You let an entry drift from CAPE into protest-only territory unaware. The 80-day CAPE cutoff and the 180-day protest clock run independently, so an entry can leave CAPE while still inside the protest window. Fix: bucket by days-since-liquidation, not by a single deadline.

When checking status by hand stops scaling

Everything above is free, and for one entry, or a few hundred, it is genuinely a spreadsheet afternoon. I want to be honest about that before I mention what my team builds, because leading with product on a status-check how-to would be dishonest. If your book is small, do it yourself; you do not need us.

The manual method starts to hurt at volume. When I look at a client with a few thousand entry lines showing mixed statuses across multiple brokers, the pain is not running ES-003, it is the discipline after the pull: bucketing every line by status, computing days-since-liquidation on the liquidated ones from the correct posted dates, tracking an 80-day CAPE clock and a 180-day protest clock that run independently on every entry, and keeping the whole thing current as new liquidations post daily to the bulletin. Do that by hand across a large book and the error bars widen exactly where a six-figure protest window is at stake.

That volume case is where GingerControl's IEEPA Refund Recovery service fits. The service works from the ES-003 export you provide: it buckets entries by liquidation status, tracks the deadline math per entry, and drives liquidation-status-driven eligibility and the protest deadline through an IEEPA refund calculator built on those same ES-003 fields. To set expectations honestly: GingerControl is builder-not-broker, human-in-the-loop software and advisory. It does not connect to or pull from ACE for you, it is not the importer of record, it is not a licensed customs broker, and it does not file your underlying customs entries or guarantee a refund. You still pull ES-003 and read the status; the service turns thousands of statuses into a defensible, deadline-bucketed list and files the full refund package from it. If you would rather stay ahead of the policy changes that move these deadlines, the Tariff Briefing digest tracks CBP, USTR, and Federal Register updates in plain English.

FAQ

How do I check if my entry is liquidated in ACE? Run the ES-003 report in the ACE Portal under your Importer of Record account, add the Liquidation Status and Liquidation Date fields from the column picker before running, then export to Excel and read the status per line. Do not rely on your broker's spreadsheet; verify against ACE, which is the source the deadline runs from.

What does liquidated mean in customs? Liquidation is CBP's final computation of the duties, taxes, and fees owed on an entry. Until an entry liquidates it is unliquidated and the duties are not final. Once it liquidates, the amounts are fixed and a strict 180-day protest clock begins from the posted liquidation date.

How long does CBP take to liquidate an entry? There is no fixed number; CBP commonly liquidates routine entries within a few months to about a year of entry, so you read the status rather than assume a date. The statutory backstop is one year: an entry not liquidated within one year of the date of entry is deemed liquidated by operation of law, extendable to a four-year cap.

How many days after liquidation can you file a protest? 180 days, under 19 U.S.C. 1514(c)(3), running from the date of the electronically posted (legal) liquidation, not the courtesy notice. For IEEPA entries there is also an earlier, roughly 80-day CAPE window from liquidation. Deciding between them is covered in the 180-day liquidation deadline guide.

Can I check liquidation status if my broker filed the entry? Yes. Liquidation data belongs to the importer of record, so if your ACE account is the IOR, ES-003 returns every line filed under your IOR number regardless of which broker keyed it. A broker-only sub-account, or a DDP shipment where the seller was the IOR, comes back empty.

Related resources

• How to Pull the ES-003 Report in ACE to Find Your IEEPA-Affected Entries, the companion pull for finding and sizing IEEPA duty.
• The 180-Day Liquidation Deadline for IEEPA Protests and CAPE, the deep dive on the protest clock and the Form 19 boilerplate.
• CAPE vs Protest vs PSC: Which One to File and When, the channel decision once you know a status.
• How to Build the ACE CAPE Submission for an IEEPA Refund, the next step for CAPE-eligible entries.
• Section 122 Liquidation Monitoring Guide for Importers, the Section-122-specific monitoring calendar.
• Who Can File Your IEEPA Refund: Power of Attorney and the ACE Filer, for the authorization question behind the filing.

References

• Cornell Legal Information Institute, "19 CFR 159.9, Notice of liquidation and date of liquidation for formal entries," accessed July 13, 2026. law.cornell.edu
• Cornell Legal Information Institute, "19 CFR 159.11, Entries liquidated by operation of law," accessed July 13, 2026. law.cornell.edu
• Cornell Legal Information Institute, "19 CFR 159.12, Extension of time for liquidation," accessed July 13, 2026. law.cornell.edu
• Cornell Legal Information Institute, "19 U.S.C. 1514, Protest against decisions of the Customs Service," accessed July 13, 2026. law.cornell.edu
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection, "Official Notice of Extension, Suspension and Liquidation" (electronic liquidation bulletin), accessed July 13, 2026. trade.cbp.dhs.gov
• CBP CSMS #68340863, "UPDATE, Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) for IEEPA Refunds, April 20, 2026 Deployment," accessed July 13, 2026. content.govdelivery.com
• Green Worldwide Shipping, "CAPE Phase 3 for IEEPA Tariff Refunds On Track for End of July as Federal Circuit Appeal Continues," 2026, accessed July 13, 2026. greenworldwide.com
• Holland & Knight, "IEEPA Tariff Refund Update: Government Appeals CIT Refund Order and the Road Ahead for Importers," June 2026, accessed July 13, 2026. hklaw.com