Zolli vs. a customs broker
A customs broker is a person or firm that files customs declarations on your behalf — you depend on their availability and are billed per declaration. Zolli is software that files autonomously the moment your ERP, WMS, OMS or TMS data is ready, with an optional human approval step.
What a customs broker does
A customs broker (also called a customs declarant or customs agent) is a person or firm that prepares and lodges the customs declaration on your behalf. It is a service model: you hand over your data and documents, a trained specialist enters the declaration manually, and you are typically billed per declaration.
That also means a dependency. Throughput is governed by that person's availability — volume peaks, off-hours or absences can create waiting times. General information on goods traffic is published by the BAZG (bazg.admin.ch).
How Zolli differs
Zolli is not a service provider but software. As soon as your operational data is ready in ERP, WMS, OMS or TMS, Zolli generates the appropriate Passar declaration and submits it autonomously to the system. A human approval step can be placed before submission as an option, but is not mandatory for every single declaration.
Throughput therefore no longer depends on the availability of an individual specialist, but on the data being present. How Zolli files on Passar is described on the What is Passar? page.
When a broker still makes sense
The two are not mutually exclusive. Customs brokers themselves can use Zolli as their declaration engine to scale volume without hiring more declarants.
For rare edge cases and niche situations, a broker can still make sense. Further answers are available in the frequently asked questions.