Systems and methods are disclosed for a brokerage operations support system to facilitate international shipping of goods into a country. The system receives information pertaining to a shipment and rates the shipment for a specific country by applying rules defined for the country's customs regulations. Status information of the shipment is received by the system, including whether the shipment has cleared the importing country's customs process. If the shipment has not cleared, the handling systems ensure the shipment is withheld from delivery until clearance is obtained. A flexible system architecture comprising a server and both attended and unattended workstations for a core system that can be modified to allow rating and processing of shipments occur in various modes to accommodate the procedures for each importing country.