Get goods moving faster with this simple yet efficient customs clearance data sheet ??

Well, what a hectic few months this has been! Or should I say year! All we needed was Brexit to come along too - a right humpty-dumpty at the customs. While the new norm of the UK borders has had all us in a frenzy, it’s also been a fun learning curve, don’t you think? ??

This past year has been so hard. As if the pain caused by Covid-19 wasn’t enough for the population and businesses, Brexit has certainly created even more obstacles for many people. 

While I totally understand the difficulties, and maybe the reasons why folks are still not fully prepared for the new reality, I would like to share the challenges I face as a customs agent. I hope this will help exporters/importers prepare for their customs process and get their cargo moving faster.

New Rules and Regulations

In an ever-changing world of rules and regulations within the Customs regime, it is the exporter’s responsibility to investigate whether specific exports of a product are subject to the export control rules. If in doubt, it is important to seek advice. If you are unsure of where to get that advice, feel free to send me a message and I can pass on details of a customs advisor who I can highly recommend. ??

The challenges have been many. Each day we encounter new ones, and no doubt there will be more to come, but today I wanted to talk about the most common challenge I am facing on a daily basis.

Receiving Clear Customs Clearance Instructions

It seems that the importance of providing clear customs clearance instructions to a Customs Agent has yet to be fully understood and adopted.

Until now, my experience of gathering all the information needed to complete a customs entry has been a long-winded and time-consuming process with emails ping ponging back and forth.

Anyone ever been here? Here’s the scenario for you…

I provide a specific list of questions to get the information that has to be put on a customs declaration – but the list comes back only half completed.

What surprises me is that folks don’t seem to understand that they are wasting their own time. This data is mandatory. Full stop. Without that data the cargo is going nowhere.

This, of course, leads to the risks of:

• Information being overlooked.
• Unnecessary confusion being created where possible mistakes can occur.
• Expensive delays in processing the customs entry.
• Long delays in getting the goods moving.
• Possible demurrage charges are incurred.

For this reason, we created a laser-sharp, one page Word document, as a checklist to reduce the chaos and gather all the information that is necessary to complete all the following basic declarations:

• EAD - Export Accompanying Document
• TAD - Transit Accompanying Document
• ENS - Entry Summary Declaration

You can see this simple Customs Clearance Instructions Sheet online here.

For us, and for our customers, the advantages are that it:

• Provides authorised instructions to the customs agent all in one go.
• Saves precious time.
• Avoids confusion.
• Minimises errors.
•  Speeds up the whole customs process.
•  Limits /avoids demurrage charges for waiting on information.
• Provides compliance with document control requirements
•  Enables faster turnaround of your products

In short, it’s a complete customs clearance sheet that makes everyone’s life easier. It’s a win-win.

These early months of 2021 have been an incredibly steep learning curve.

Before November 2020, I had no experience of customs procedures. I had a massive amount of help from our customs advisors as I created this custom clearance form. Over time, and through trial and error, there have been many amendments. Perhaps, in future, we’ll see more ways to improve it, but for now it works beautifully.  

We trialled the form by sending it to our clients and carriers. The feedback from them was instrumental in tweaking the data fields. We learned that not everyone sees and interprets things in a predictable way. The only way to know if you are on the right track is to test it out!

Just to give you one example, Section 2 of the form is for collecting data from the carrier. The date and time of arrival in the EU is required when preparing the ENS – SSD.

As you can see, the highlighted field asks for the Estimated Time in EU – yet one person (bless their cotton socks ??) came back with the answer ‘two days’. I must admit that I laughed. They thought the question meant “How long are you staying in Europe?”

It was obvious that the data field was not as clear as I thought it was. I tweaked it to say: ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) in EU. Finger crossed. Up to now this seems to work.

Mandatory Data

The person who knows the most about their product is the exporter themselves. In theory this should make preparing a customs clearance instruction sheet a doddle. Yet, not only are we not receiving instructions, but invoices are not being prepared in the correct manner with all the mandatory data.

Here is the list of mandatory data that should be on invoices destined for export as of 1st January:

• Consignor company details + EORI
• Consignee company details + EORI
• VAT number
• Incoterms / Delivery terms
• CPC - Reason of export
• HS codes (8 digits for Export & 10 Digits for Imports)
• Product description
• Gross weight
• Net weight
• Quantity of pieces
• Country of origin
• Number of packages
• Value of goods in local currency
• VAT rate % & value

The Customs Clearance Instruction Sheet

The sheet itself is divided into five sections

Section 1, 4 & 5 – All information that can/should be on the commercial invoice, yet more often that not there is always something missing. The sheet helps to gather the information we have already received but also to add all the missing data that comes through in dribs and drabs from emails.

Section 2 – Carrier info – While not all the information in this section is required for the EAD & TAD, Lobina usually also organises the actual transport as well as the Customs formalities. Therefore, all the information in this section is mandatory for Lobina to file the ENS -Entry Summary Declaration - Safety & Security Declaration.

Section 3 – Customs details - The main reason I added this section was because I learned how often the NCTS system ‘times-out’ if you take too long. One silly mistake and you have to start all over again. As a result, it’s better to organise all the information together on one document and reduce the risk of errors.

Finally

I understand that for many it is going to take time to organise the stationery and maybe the software programs to accommodate the new data fields that are mandatory. In the meantime, to help process your customs declarations more efficiently, feel free to use our Customs Clearance Instructions Sheet template for UK exports.

Whether you use Lobina for your UK Export declarations or not, try using our clearance sheet and you will see how things will begin to move faster. ??????