When Will I Get My CAPE Refund? Batch Timing Explained

Why do CAPE refunds arrive in batches instead of a single payment?

CAPE refunds arrive in batches because CBP processes IEEPA Chapter 99 removals in validated declaration groups, not entry-by-entry. With more than 75,300 CAPE declarations covering 11.2 million entries submitted in the first six days alone, CBP runs the refund pipeline through ACH cycles tied to liquidation and reliquidation events, which means a single importer's refund can land as three, five, or ten separate ACH deposits over several weeks.

When will I get my CAPE refund and how do I track it?

Most CAPE refunds appear in the designated ACH account 3 to 5 weeks from the date of liquidation or reliquidation, per CBP guidance. You track them through the ACE REV-603 Trade Refund report, the REV-613 rejected refunds report, and the REV-615 CAPE Detail Refund report once Treasury issues funds.

TL;DR

If you filed a CAPE declaration in April or May 2026 and expected a single refund check, you are going to see multiple ACH deposits arrive on different days, sometimes weeks apart. That is normal. CBP processes CAPE declarations in validated batches, reliquidates affected entries in waves, and the U.S. Treasury Fiscal Service disburses the resulting refunds through standard ACH cycles. As of May 11, 2026, CBP had accepted 15.1 million entries for IEEPA duty removal and reliquidated 8.3 million of them, representing roughly $35.46 billion in refunds and interest. GingerControl built CBP Phased Refund Tracking as one of our four IEEPA recovery routes precisely because the batch rollout creates entries that quietly fall through the cracks if no one is watching the REV reports.

Last updated: May 2026

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What batching actually means inside CAPE Phase 1

CAPE Phase 1 launched on April 20, 2026, and it is structured around three sequential processing stages, not a single transaction. Each stage produces its own batch.

Stage 1 is file validation. The CSV declaration uploaded to ACE is validated for structural integrity, filer code alignment, and entry-level eligibility. Each individual CAPE Declaration is capped at 9,999 entries, and the first three characters of each entry number must match the filer's ACE filer code prefix. Entries that fail validation are kicked out of that batch.

Stage 2 is IEEPA Chapter 99 removal and reliquidation. CBP strips the 9903.01 or 9903.02 provision from the entry summary, recalculates duty without the IEEPA layer, and reliquidates the entry. This happens in CBP-controlled batches, not on the filer's schedule.

Stage 3 is Treasury disbursement. Once reliquidation is complete, the refund moves to the U.S. Treasury Fiscal Service for ACH disbursement. Treasury issued the first CAPE ACH refunds on May 12, 2026, 22 days after Phase 1 launch.

The result: even a perfectly filed CAPE declaration covering 9,999 entries does not produce one refund. It produces N refunds, where N is determined by how CBP grouped the reliquidations and how Treasury bundled the ACH transmissions.

Why your refunds may not arrive together

There are at least six structural reasons a single importer's CAPE refunds land in different batches. I see all of these in conversations with controllers and AP teams in May 2026.

Reason	Why it splits the refund
Multiple filer codes	Each filer code is a separate CAPE declaration channel. Entries filed under different brokers reliquidate on different timelines.
Different liquidation status at filing	Unliquidated entries reliquidate faster than entries 60 to 80 days post-liquidation, which must first be cleared for reliquidation.
Different bond stacks	Entries sit under different continuous bonds, and CBP reconciles each bond's exposure separately before releasing refunds.
FTZ and bonded warehouse exclusions	Duty Deferral (08), Reconciliation (09), TIB (23), and Drawback (47) entries are not eligible for Phase 1 and route to later phases.
Outstanding debts offset under 19 CFR 24.72	CBP nets any open AD/CVD adjustments, bond claims, or penalty notices against the refund before disbursement. No advance notice.
ACH banking mismatches	Entries where the IOR's ACH details are not on file fall to paper check, which adds weeks and lands in a different batch from the ACH-eligible entries.

Bottom line for AP teams: Do not reconcile CAPE refunds against the declaration total in a single accounting period. Build a per-entry expected refund schedule, then mark each entry as received when the corresponding ACH deposit hits. The reconciliation is at the entry level, not the declaration level.

How to track CAPE refunds in ACE

CBP exposes three reports that together give you the full batch tracking picture. Each one populates at a different stage of the pipeline.

REV-603 Trade Refund Report. This is the primary tracking report. It shows pending refunds with status "Sent to Treasury" once CBP processing completes, then updates to "Treasury Issued" when ACH disbursement occurs. The Refund Secondary Status column flags "Funds Diverted" when CBP applied an offset under 19 CFR 24.72 for outstanding debts. If a refund is smaller than expected, REV-603 is where you find out why.

REV-613 ACH Rejected Refunds Report. This is your early warning. Any refund that bounced because the recipient is not enrolled in ACH Refunds shows up here. Without action, the refund converts to paper check, which adds 2 to 4 weeks and creates a reconciliation headache. The fix is enrolling in ACH Refunds through the ACE Portal and confirming bank routing and account details.

REV-615 Trade CAPE Detail Refund Report. This is the CAPE-specific detail report, and it populates only after refunds are issued. It links each refund line back to the CAPE declaration and the underlying entry, which is essential for audit defense and AP reconciliation. If a CAPE declaration entry is missing from REV-615 after Treasury disbursement on related entries, that is the signal to open a denial trace.

GingerControl is AI global trade compliance infrastructure that helps importers, exporters, and customs brokers classify products, simulate tariff costs, and track policy changes. For CAPE refunds specifically, the CBP Phased Refund Tracking service monitors REV-603, REV-613, and REV-615 across a portfolio of entries and flags the ones that are not landing on the expected schedule.

Typical timing patterns reported in CAPE Phase 1

The timing data from the first month of CAPE Phase 1 gives a reasonable baseline. From CBP guidance and trade press reporting:

• CAPE declaration validation: typically same-day to 72 hours after CSV upload, assuming the file passes structural checks
• CBP IEEPA Chapter 99 removal and reliquidation: CBP has accepted 15.1 million entries and reliquidated 8.3 million as of May 11, 2026, implying a roughly 55 percent reliquidation completion rate in the first three weeks
• ACH disbursement after reliquidation: 3 to 5 weeks per CBP guidance
• Total declaration-to-cash for clean entries: approximately 60 to 90 days from CAPE declaration acceptance, consistent with CBP's published guidance

Importers who filed in the first week of CAPE Phase 1 are reporting initial ACH deposits in mid-to-late May, with subsequent batches landing through June and into July for the lower-priority entries within their declarations.

What to do if a batch never arrives

If REV-603 shows reliquidation complete but no ACH deposit hit your account within 5 weeks, work through this checklist:

1. Check REV-613 first. If the refund was rejected for ACH enrollment, that is your problem and the fix is enrolling in ACH Refunds through ACE. Once enrolled, contact your client representative to request reissuance.
2. Check the REV-603 Refund Secondary Status. "Funds Diverted" means CBP offset the refund against an outstanding debt under 19 CFR 24.72. The remaining balance, if any, will still disburse. The diverted portion is gone unless you successfully contest the underlying debt.
3. Verify the bond ID on the underlying entry. Refunds tied to entries with closed or transferred bonds can pause until the bond reconciliation completes.
4. Confirm your ACH banking details are current in ACE. Stale routing or account numbers will silently route refunds to a paper check track.
5. Open a denial trace with your client representative or your broker. For entries that show no movement on any of the three REV reports for more than 6 weeks post-acceptance, escalate.
6. Track the 180-day protest clock on liquidated entries. Under 19 U.S.C. 1505 and 1514, the protest deadline continues to run regardless of CAPE status. A Phase 1 batch that quietly slips past the protest window on liquidated entries is the worst-case outcome.

The 180-day protest clock is the silent risk in batch processing. If CBP fails to reliquidate an entry through CAPE within the window, and you have not protected your rights through a parallel protest filing, the refund right can lapse.

Cash flow forecasting around batched refunds

For AP and AR teams, the batch reality changes how you forecast the cash. A few practical adjustments:

Do not book the full refund on the CAPE declaration acceptance date. Book it on the entry-level reliquidation, which is what REV-603 confirms.

Build a rolling expected-deposits calendar. Assume reliquidation in batches over 4 to 8 weeks for a typical declaration, with ACH disbursement 3 to 5 weeks after each batch. The cash arrives in a series, not a lump.

Reserve for offsets. Importers with any open AD/CVD adjustment, penalty notice, or bond claim should expect a Funds Diverted line. Reserve 5 to 15 percent of the refund total against possible offsets until REV-603 confirms the gross figure.

Plan for FTZ and TIB entries separately. Those are not in Phase 1, period. Phase 2 timing is still uncertain as of May 2026, with Phase 2 most likely in Q3 2026 once Phase 1 acceptance rates stabilize.

Quotable insight: CAPE is not a refund event, it is a refund pipeline. The companies that recover cleanly treat each entry as its own refund track, with its own expected timing and its own failure modes, and they reconcile at the entry level rather than at the declaration level. Importers who treat CAPE as a single transaction are the ones writing follow-up emails to brokers in June asking where the rest of the money is.

FAQ

When will I get my CAPE refund if I filed in late April 2026? Most clean unliquidated-entry filers from late April 2026 saw their first ACH deposits between May 12 and the end of May, with subsequent batches landing through June and July. CBP guidance is 60 to 90 days from CAPE Declaration acceptance to refund, but the actual cash arrives in waves. GingerControl's CBP Phased Refund Tracking service watches REV-603, REV-613, and REV-615 across all your entries so you know exactly which batch is landing when.

Why is my CAPE refund smaller than I expected? The most common reasons are an offset under 19 CFR 24.72 for outstanding customs debts (shown as "Funds Diverted" in the REV-603 Refund Secondary Status column), pending bond reconciliation, or ineligible entries within your declaration that were silently dropped. GingerControl's tracking workflow pulls the REV-603 status column for every entry in your declaration and flags any divergence between the expected refund and the disbursed amount.

How long does CAPE reliquidation take inside CBP? CBP reported 8.3 million entries reliquidated out of 15.1 million accepted as of May 11, 2026, roughly three weeks after Phase 1 launched. That implies a typical reliquidation window of 3 to 6 weeks for accepted entries, followed by 3 to 5 weeks for ACH disbursement. GingerControl's IEEPA refund tracking builds the per-entry timeline so you do not lose visibility between acceptance and disbursement.

Can I track CAPE refunds without an ACE Portal account? No. The REV-603, REV-613, and REV-615 reports are inside the ACE Portal. Your customs broker can run them on your behalf if you have a power of attorney in place, but the data lives in ACE. GingerControl's refund tracking workflow pulls the ACE report data systematically across an entry portfolio, which is the operational gap for importers with hundreds or thousands of CAPE-eligible entries.

What happens to FTZ and bonded warehouse entries in CAPE? FTZ-related Duty Deferral (08), Reconciliation (09), TIB (23), and Drawback (47) entries are excluded from CAPE Phase 1 and route to later phases. GingerControl maintains a separate tracking workflow for Phase 2 candidates so those entries are queued and ready when CBP opens the next phase, rather than discovered late.

Is the 180-day protest deadline still running while I wait for my CAPE batch? Yes. The protest clock under 19 U.S.C. 1514 runs from the date of liquidation regardless of CAPE status. If CBP does not reliquidate a liquidated entry through CAPE within the 180-day window, and you have not filed a parallel protest, the refund right can lapse. GingerControl's CBP Phased Refund Tracking flags any entry approaching the 180-day mark without confirmed reliquidation.

How does GingerControl help with CAPE batch tracking? GingerControl operates four IEEPA recovery routes: CAPE filing support, CBP Phased Refund Tracking, protest filing under 19 USC 1514, and litigation referral to international trade firms. For batch tracking specifically, we monitor REV-603, REV-613, and REV-615 across your entry portfolio, flag offsets, ACH rejections, missing entries, and approaching protest deadlines, and provide a per-entry reconciliation against your expected refund. The service is built for the importers who realized in mid-May 2026 that their refund is going to land in pieces.

If you are tracking a multi-batch CAPE refund

If you do not yet know your total recoverable amount, start there. The IEEPA refund toolkit on this page has two free calculators that size the opportunity in minutes. The ES-003 drop-in calculator parses your ACE export entirely in the browser (nothing uploads), classifies every line by Chapter 99 prefix, buckets entries by liquidation status, and returns total IEEPA duties paid plus estimated recoverable amount. The quiz-style estimator is the faster path if you do not have your ES-003 yet, a handful of questions and you get a directional estimate.

If you submitted CAPE declarations covering hundreds or thousands of entries, the operational reality is that no spreadsheet tracks REV-603, REV-613, and REV-615 reliably across the time window. GingerControl's CBP Phased Refund Tracking is one of our four IEEPA recovery routes. We monitor the batch rollout, flag entries at risk of falling through, and confirm that each ACH disbursement matches the expected entry-level refund. The other three routes are CAPE filing support, formal protest under 19 USC 1514, and litigation referral for past-deadline exposure.

Talk to our team about CAPE refund batch tracking, missing batch trace, or Phase 2 readiness for your FTZ and bonded warehouse entries.

Related reading

• The Importer's IEEPA Tariff Refund Guide
• ACE CAPE Submission for IEEPA Refunds
• IEEPA Refund Timeline
• ES-003 Report in ACE for IEEPA Refunds
• Will CBP Refund IEEPA Tariffs Automatically?
• How to Check Entry Liquidation Status
• CAPE-Eligible Entries for IEEPA Refunds
• How to File a Customs Protest Under 19 USC 1514

References

[REF 1] U.S. Customs and Border Protection, IEEPA Duty Refunds Data cited: CAPE Phase 1 launch April 20, 2026, 15.1 million entries accepted and 8.3 million reliquidated as of May 11, 2026, $35.46 billion in refunds and interest Source: CBP IEEPA Duty Refunds Published: 2026

[REF 2] CBP Trade Information Notice on CAPE Phase 1 Data cited: 9,999 entries per declaration cap, filer code prefix alignment, exclusion of entry types 08, 09, 23, and 47 Source: Trade Information Notice CAPE Published: April 2026

[REF 3] CBP ACE Reports REV-603 and REV-613 Quick Reference Data cited: REV-603 Trade Refund Report status fields, REV-613 ACH rejected refunds, REV-615 CAPE detail report Source: REV-603 and REV-613 Quick Reference Published: April 2026

[REF 4] CBP ACH Refund program Data cited: ACH refund timing 3 to 5 weeks from liquidation, 19 CFR 24.72 offset framework Source: CBP ACH Refund Published: 2026

[REF 5] Steptoe analysis of CAPE mechanism Data cited: First ACH refunds issued May 12, 2026, 22 days after Phase 1 launch, Phase 2 outlook for Q3 2026 Source: Steptoe CBP CAPE Mechanism Published: May 2026

[REF 6] Thompson Hine SmartTrade analysis Data cited: 75,300 CAPE declarations and 11.2 million entries submitted in the first six days of Phase 1 Source: CBP Confirms April 20 2026 Launch of CAPE Phase 1 Published: April 2026

[REF 7] White and Williams analysis of CAPE process Data cited: 60 to 90 day refund timeline post-acceptance, batch reliquidation mechanics Source: IEEPA Tariff Refunds CBP Launches CAPE Process Published: 2026

[REF 8] BDO IEEPA Tariff Refund FAQ Data cited: CBP audit risk, documentation expectations on CAPE refund claims Source: BDO IEEPA Tariff Refunds FAQ Published: 2026

[REF 9] CBP IEEPA Refunds Fact Sheet Data cited: ACH disbursement requirement, refund consolidation by Importer of Record Source: IEEPA Refunds Fact Sheet Published: April 2026

[REF 10] 19 U.S.C. 1514 protest provisions Data cited: 180-day protest deadline from liquidation Source: 19 USC 1514

[REF 11] 19 U.S.C. 1505 disbursement provisions Data cited: Statutory framework for duty refund disbursement Source: 19 USC 1505