Three clocks start when the box lands. You start none of them.
One is statutory: the bill of entry, due under Section 46(3) of the Customs Act, 1962. Two are commercial and belong to other people: detention, charged by the line, and storage, charged by the terminal. They have different free periods and different daily rates, which is why one number in your head is always the wrong number. Put the real ones in and see what the next day costs. Everything runs in your browser. Indicative, not advice.
The relevant date is entry inwards at a seaport, date of arrival of cargo at an inland container depot, airport or land customs station. Entry inwards is an order under Section 31 and is not necessarily the day the vessel berthed.
Detention is the line's charge on its container. Storage or ground rent is the terminal's charge on its yard. Take both from the tariff, not from memory.
Reading the clock.
Every figure, with its instrument. The bill of entry is due before the end of the day, including holidays, preceding the day of arrival: Section 46(3), Customs Act, 1962, as substituted by Section 93 of the Finance Act, 2021, effective 28-03-2021. The Board may prescribe a later limit for cases it names, no later than the end of the day of arrival: First proviso to Section 46(3), Customs Act, 1962, inserted by Section 93 of the Finance Act, 2021, effective 28-03-2021. It may be presented up to 30 days before expected arrival: Second proviso to Section 46(3), Customs Act, 1962, as substituted by Section 76 of the Finance Act, 2018, effective 29-03-2018. Late presentation costs Rs 5,000 a day for the initial three days of default and Rs 10,000 a day thereafter: Regulation 4(3) of the Bill of Entry (Electronic Integrated Declaration and Paperless Processing) Regulations, 2018, notified by Notification No. 36/2018-Customs (N.T.) dated 11-05-2018, effective 11-05-2018. That charge cannot exceed the duty payable on the bill of entry, or Rs 50,000 where no duty is payable: Regulation 4 of the Bill of Entry (Electronic Integrated Declaration and Paperless Processing) Regulations, 2018, notified by Notification No. 36/2018-Customs (N.T.) dated 11-05-2018, effective 11-05-2018. The clock is measured from entry inwards at a seaport, date of arrival of cargo at an inland container depot, airport or land customs station: CBIC Circular No. 12/2017-Customs dated 31-03-2017, para 4, effective 31-03-2017.
What this tool refuses to assert. Free days, daily rates and the duty payable are yours. They sit in your line's tariff, your terminal's schedule of charges and your own assessment, and no calculator can know them. Two further things are missing on purpose. Which stations and lanes the Board has placed on the day of arrival limit, which is why that is a choice above rather than a lookup: the prescribing instruments are real, but we could not read them on an official source, and public reproductions place inland container depots on both sides. And any interest rate on unpaid duty, because Section 47(2) of the Customs Act, 1962 fixes it by notification within a band and we could not confirm the notification in force. A figure we cannot trace does not ship.
Where Purser stops. Purser computes these same clocks from the shipment record rather than from typed numbers, and carries the instrument on the row. It never submits to a government portal, and it never sends a message without a recorded human approval event. It does not file your bill of entry: your broker files it and keeps the fee. What changes is that the dates are watched, the burn is priced in rupees a day, and the declaration is checked before it goes.
The clock, watched from the record.
This page runs on numbers you type. Purser runs the same arithmetic on the consignment itself, from arrival to out of charge, and tells a person before the money starts.