10 July 2023
Who does this notice affect?
Prospective importers, import permit holders, importers, brokers, customs agents and freight forwarders.
What has changed?
The department is regularly contacted by representatives from Australian companies and organisations that cannot access their company or organisation’s BICON account. This can occur if an employee creates a single-user BICON account, and the BICON account details are not available to other staff if the employee goes on extended leave or permanently leaves the company or organisation. This results in the company or organisation being unable to access critical import permits or apply for permit variations and new permit applications. Importers are reminded to explore options for ensuring continued access to BICON accounts irrespective of staff movements, or otherwise risk losing access to the account permanently. These options include upgrading accounts from single user to multi-user accounts and assigning multiple administrators (where appropriate), and ensuring that the email address used to create the BICON account is accessible in the event of staff departures (i.e. a generic company or organisation email address, not a staff member’s individual email address). In the case that a BICON account is inaccessible to an organisation, the account cannot be recovered, and a new account will be required. For privacy reasons the department is not permitted to change BICON account access on your behalf if a company or organisation cannot access the email address the BICON account was created under.
Information on upgrading from a single user to a multi-user BICON account can be found in BICON under the help card “How do I upgrade from a single user account to a multiple user account?”
Further information
If you require further information, please call the Biosecurity Import Support Team (BIST) on 1800 900 090 (option 1, option 1) or email imports@aff.gov.au.