Timely message because Customs will enforce eAPIS May 18, so I've been doing some work on this, including looking at the Lobo tool (there's another tool out there but far more expensive and I haven't looked at it).
In my earlier message I said that doing it through the CBP site is "not up to the standards of convenience and user friendliness as a typical commercial site, but average compared to other government sites". Read that to mean VERY CUMBERSOME for someone like me who flies frequently abroad. Principally because you can't store passenger info (name, DOB, gender, permanent address, address while in the US, Passport No. and expiration date). It becomes a REAL PAIN to re-enter all that for all regular passengers every time you go. (My wife said "so put me as crew, like a stewardess, so it'll store the data" and without thinking I said "you don't look like a stewardess". Been in the dog house since.)
Anyhow, Lobo's FlashPass ($60) holds
the promise of making the process a snap. You put all pertinent data in one time, not just passenger data but also manifests for regular trips, and when a trip comes up you just take one of the manifests, change date and time of departure (it adjusts arrival date/time), add or delete passenger names, and you're done. For the return trip, there's a "clone" feature that reverses the trip. It saves in your computer an XML file which you simply upload to CBP after logging into their system.
But I highlighted "promise" because as of now the program is riddled with bugs/squawks. Some are just nitpicking items that would make the data entry easier but some are
fatal and will likely cause your upload to be bounced by CBP. I'm a computer consultant (latest project may be seen at
www.backinaflash.com) and I figure the bugs can be fixed in a few hours, long before May 18 -- assuming of course that Lobo is reading the feedback he's getting and gets to work.
Example of a nit: on each itinerary you must provide for each person an address while in the US in addition to the person's permanent address. You'd figure that for a US citizen/resident, where you've already inputed the US permanent address, that field would be either filled in (but editable) or at least available from a drop-down list, but it isn't, so you fill it by hand every time. Oh, did I tell you that the city is in a drop-down list? Not the street address or Zip code, but only the city. Sorry if I seem harsh, but for a programmer it's grating.
Example of fatal error: if your aircraft owner is a company, you can enter it, but the program fails to put it in the XML file, so CBP won't get it. Aircraft owner will be blank, and I'm guessing CBP will reject your upload. Moreover, there is a glitch in the software and when you enter the company info it picks up Mexico as the country of the company's contact, even though you put in USA. And to add insult to injury, these huge faults are not evident when the program shows you a user-readable version of the XML file; put differently, you get shown what the XML file will have, you see that the company owning the airplane is included and that the owner contact is in the USA, and when you go look at the actual XML file you saved -- the one you're about to send to CBP -- you find no aircraft owner and Mexico for the owner's contact.
These kinds of mistakes -- especially for material you will be submitting to the US government -- are troubling. I'm going to give Lobo the benefit of the doubt. And he's got over a month. We'll see.
Update since initial posting: Lobo got back to me, they've already picked up most of the bugs on the new version about to come out, and will address those they haven't. They're sending me the new version and I agreed to put it through its paces
pro bono, so it's looking good.
Ernie