"Customs clearance completed" is good news that reads like a status report from a government office, which is roughly what it is. The customs authority in the destination country has finished its check and released the parcel. The border phase is over. What remains is the domestic leg: the parcel has to be collected from the customs facility by the carrier that will deliver it, moved to a local depot, and put on a van.
This page explains what "completed" means in customs terms, decodes the long SHEIN versions of the status, and answers the question that usually follows: how long after customs clearance will the parcel arrive. The stage before this one is covered in awaiting customs clearance meaning.
Short answer: Customs clearance completed means the customs authority has released the parcel for delivery. The European Commission defines clearance "for release for free circulation" as "the documented permission granted by the national customs authority in the EU to allow the goods to be used or consumed in the EU", and U.S. Customs and Border Protection describes the same step as an official who will "assess the proper duty, and release it for delivery." From this scan the parcel is in the domestic carrier's hands or about to be, and the next events are a handover to the local carrier, arrival at a local facility, and out for delivery. No retailer publishes a delivery time from this point; in practice it is the domestic carrier's normal transit, which is days rather than weeks. SHEIN's long form, "Customs clearance has been completed, tally is completed and waiting for LM to pick up the goods", means the parcel is cleared and counted and is waiting for the last-mile ("LM") carrier to collect it.
What "completed" means, in the authority's own words
Clearance is a decision, and it has a definition. The European Commission's guidance for online shoppers puts it this way: "Customs clearance for release for free circulation is the documented permission granted by the national customs authority in the EU to allow the goods to be used or consumed in the EU. This permission is given to the person established in the EU or their representative who is able to present the goods to customs."
That permission is what the "completed" scan records. In the United States the equivalent step is described by CBP for postal parcels: "a CBP official will usually prepare the paperwork for importing it, assess the proper duty, and release it for delivery."
Two things follow. First, "completed" is final: the parcel will not go back into the customs queue unless something unusual happens. Second, "completed" does not mean "paid". If duty or VAT is due, the carrier still collects it before delivery. The European Commission states that an invoice for charges "must be paid before the goods are handed over to you", and the UK government says the carrier will "normally hold your parcel for about 3 weeks" for that payment before returning it. A cleared parcel with an unpaid bill sits at the carrier, not at customs.
The SHEIN versions, decoded
SHEIN's tracking uses unusually long strings for this phase, and shoppers paste them into search word for word. The two most common:
"Customs clearance has been completed, tally is completed and waiting for LM to pick up the goods." Three facts in one line. The customs release has been granted. The consignment has been counted at the clearance facility ("tally"). And the parcel is waiting for the last-mile carrier, abbreviated LM, to collect it. The parcel is physically at the bonded or clearance facility, cleared, and not yet moving.
"Customs clearance has been completed, carrier has picked up the goods." The next step: the last-mile carrier has collected it. From here the parcel is in the domestic network, and the next scan will normally be the carrier's own arrival-at-facility or out-for-delivery event, which is when a separate local tracking number often appears.
The other SHEIN strings in this phase, in order, are "consignment information reported to customs", "prepared for customs clearance", "awaiting customs clearance", "customs is actively reviewing submitted documents", and then the completed line. The tracking guides that document SHEIN's statuses describe the end of the phase simply: the parcel "has successfully cleared customs", and the following stop as "Arrived at local facility: Your package has already arrived at the courier company in charge of delivering your package." One guide also lists "Tax paid", which "might show up when customs duties have been paid." The full status list is in SHEIN tracking statuses.
The same milestone on Temu and AliExpress
Temu shows the customs release as "being handed over by customs", and its shipping page explains why the tracking can then go quiet: orders "may be handed over to local carriers for the final leg of delivery, tracking may not be available every step of the way." AliExpress lists the sequence as "In Transit to Customs", then "Customs Clearance – The package is being inspected by your country's customs authority", then "Out for Delivery – The local courier is preparing to deliver the item." The handover step that sits between clearance and the local courier is explained in handed over to local carrier meaning, and the Temu wording in Temu tracking statuses.
How long after customs clearance until delivery?
No marketplace publishes a figure for this, so any confident number you find elsewhere is a guess. What can be said from the carriers' own material is the shape of the remaining journey: collection from the clearance facility, linehaul to a local depot, and a delivery route. Each of those is a domestic carrier step with the carrier's normal timing, so the honest expectation is days, not weeks, and it depends on the carrier the parcel was handed to and on which day of the week the clearance landed.
The specific delays that add time after a "completed" scan:
- Waiting for pickup. The SHEIN "waiting for LM to pick up" line describes a parcel that is cleared but not yet collected. Consolidated shipments are collected in batches, so a clearance on a Friday afternoon often moves on Monday.
- Weekends and holidays. Clearance facilities and domestic depots run on business days in the destination country.
- An unpaid bill. The parcel is cleared but held by the carrier for payment. Check the carrier's tracking page for a payment link before assuming a delay.
- A quiet handover. The first domestic scan may take a day or two to appear, especially where the last-mile carrier is a postal operator. AliExpress warns that courier websites "often lag in updating tracking information".
If tracking shows "customs clearance completed" and then nothing for more than a week, contact the seller, because the seller is the carrier's customer and can raise a trace. The general timings are in how long does customs clearance take.
"Customs clearance completed" but the tracking still says in transit
This is normal and is usually the two-carrier problem. The marketplace tracking aggregates the linehaul carrier's events, and the domestic carrier's own events appear on a different tracking number. Look for a second number on the order page, in the SHEIN or Temu app, or in a notification from the local carrier, and track that. The status vocabulary of the common last-mile carriers is in carrier tracking statuses.
"Clearance processing completed - import" and "clearance processing complete"
Express courier feeds word the same milestone as "clearance processing complete" or "clearance processing completed - import", usually with a city name after it. "Import" is the key word: it means the parcel has cleared customs in the destination country, which is the clearance that matters for delivery, as opposed to an export declaration at origin. The next scans are the courier's own domestic ones: departed from the clearance facility, arrived at the delivery facility, out for delivery. If a duty or tax payment is owed, the request normally arrives before or alongside this status, and the parcel does not move until it is paid. A parcel that shows "clearance processing completed - import" and then sits for a day is in the normal queue for the next domestic sort; the courier-specific customs events that come before it are explained in clearance event DHL meaning.
The express-courier wording "clearance processing completed", in its import and export versions, has its own page: clearance processing completed meaning.
"Customs declaration completed" and "export customs declaration completed"
These two strings are the origin side of the border, not the destination side. On marketplace feeds from China they appear early, after the warehouse scans: the export declaration for the consignment has been lodged and accepted, and the parcel can leave the country. They do not mean import customs is done. The import clearance comes after the flight and the arrival in your country, and is the stage the rest of this page describes. So the honest reading of "customs declaration completed" is "cleared to leave", with the airport statuses next; on SHEIN orders those are explained in SHEIN airport tracking statuses.
For merchants: the border is a milestone, not a mystery
Customers do not write in when a parcel clears customs. They write in two days later when the cleared parcel has not moved and the tracking still shows the customs line. The operational fix is to treat the release scan as a milestone with a clock on it: when a cleared parcel has not received a domestic scan within the lane's normal handover time, someone should know.
Pango normalises customs and handover events across more than 100 carriers through prebuilt connectors into one milestone set, shows the customer a plain-language step ("cleared customs, with the local carrier") on a tracking page on the merchant's domain, and flags the parcel on the order record when the next scan is late for that lane. For brands shipping duty-paid, the same order record carries the customs documents generated with the label, which is the flow described in cross-border shipping, duties and customs.
"Customs released", "customs release" and "custom release" on SHEIN
SHEIN's app also shows the release as "customs released" (and shoppers type "customs release" and "custom release"). It is the same decision as "customs clearance completed": the authority has released the parcel, and the guides describe the equivalent step as the parcel having "successfully cleared customs". The next line is normally the handover to the local carrier.
A third SHEIN wording of the same release, "customs import clearance completed, awaiting pickup by local carrier", says explicitly what the "waiting for LM" line implies: cleared, and waiting for the last-mile carrier to collect.
If you run a store and this status is generating tickets, Pango runs a free shipping and returns audit on your own orders as part of a demo; the categories to compare are returns management software and carrier management software. Book the free audit.
The bottom line
Customs clearance completed means the authority has released the parcel, which is the one customs decision that matters. From here the parcel is a domestic delivery: collected by the last-mile carrier, moved to a local depot, and put on a van, on the carrier's normal timing. A cleared parcel that sits is waiting for pickup, for a business day, or for a bill, and a week of silence is the point to contact the seller. Brands that want the border stage explained to customers automatically and the late handover flagged on the order can see Pango's order tracking or book a demo.
