What is changing?

HMRC is bringing in a new revenue calculation model on 1st August 2023.

Further information can be obtained here Alcohol Duty: rate changes - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

In order for WMS to accommodate these changes, a number of steps have been made which are included in WMS v6.8 and is available from April 2023.

Timetable

Further information will be released on this page when it becomes available.

Customer Requirements

Customer’s need to :

1. Have WMS v6.8 installed into your live system prior to 1st July 2023

2. Ensure that an ABV is provided for all stocks and recorded on the stock record, for any items which need to have an ABV

3. Customers need to audit their excise tax, commodity and product setup to ensure that they have the correct items in the correct product type, commodity code and excise tax code.

Existing Functionality

We would strongly advise that customers have the strength and size checking switched on against the commodity code / tax code, this ensures ABV is recorded on the product record and receipt. Despite this being in the system for in excess of 10 years, some customers do not have this switched on.

Failure to Check Prior to the upgrade

There will be customers who do not wish to check their setup prior to the implementation of the new regime, however please be aware that failure to do so will result in you potentially making the wrong declarations to HMRC and pay the wrong duty.

Warehousing v6.8 Changes

Strength ABV

Strengths can already be submitted to the warehouse in the EDI Pre-Advice message PA XML Structure.

Small Producers

For identification of small producers we will be using the ‘Brand’ field (which is used to store brand or producer).

This field was previously used for HMRC submissions indicating the brand for ARC and Export movements. However, from v6.8 this will become more substantially important with the changes necessary for small producer relief. Therefore, one of the main changes coming in v6.8 will be making it easier for users to find and select brands to avoid duplications, and also an easy way of maintaining and merging existing brands.

Tidy up your Data

Warehouses need to plan to use this new version to tidy up data in preparation for go live and the setup of the new small producer relief tax certificates.

We have provided a Brand merge/ update facility within v6.8, which will allow you to correct spelling mistakes and duplicates of the brand field.

Planned Update and Options

The sections below detail what the plans are for the upgrade on the 31st July 2023 along with an optional pre-update plan that customers can opt in to.

Is there a cost?

Yes, there is a cost and it is based on your volume of products and stocks. Please speak to customer services to discuss.

You can perform this update yourself, you would be changing the existing codes and data to new codes and data and then manually checking all the products are on the correct new codes, alternatively you can setup the new structure and re-land all the stock on your system.

Optional Pre-Update Plan

The idea of the pre-update is to help customers be ready for the changes on 1st August and to be able to resolve any issues prior to that time with stock data which is far easier than trying to do it afterwards.

The plan includes:

1. Turning on all strength checking. This involves adding and correcting the commodity codes and excise tax codes for the correct strengths and then turning them on.

2. Providing you with a report of all products and all stocks which do not match the commodity/tax strengths or sizes.

3. Providing you with a list of any old commodity codes where you are still using them for products and stocks.

4. Archiving products which have no stock and are invalid.

HMRC Update - Data Change plans

We are planning to offer to automate the required changes for the rates structure to Warehouse and Commerce customers.

On-the-day Updates

All warehouses have now been allocated and informed of the cut-off time for which all users must logged off Vision Warehousing and Bond to allow us to run scripts. You will be informed after approximately 90 minutes that you're able to log back in to your Vision applications but NO movements are to be processed including creating despatch movements, pick/confirm pick orders or process goods in or out movements until the following day.

What is changed or updated?

1. New tax codes will be created with the correct rates & relief setup, commodity codes (along with quotas & import document setup) will be created from existing data and linked to the new codes

2. 4xx tax codes & linked commodities will be archived

3. Product fixes

   1. Cider products will be corrected to ‘Intermediate' product type

   2. Products with invalid strengths (0 or >100) will be updated from stocks with a valid strength or will be set to the highest for the commodity code.

   3. Products with a duty paid tax code setup will be corrected from the stocks with a correct tax code, this relates to old products setup before the product type and excise tax code were linked.

   4. Low alcohol products will be linked to the new ‘Low Alcohol’ product type

   5. Sparkling ciders with a strength between 5.51 and 8.49 will be linked to the new ‘Other Fermented Products’ product type

   6. Made wines (42x tax codes) will be converted across to the ‘Other Fermented Products’ tax code also

4. Products remaining which aren’t valid for conversion due to incorrect strengths and have no stock will be archived

5. Remaining products with a 4xx tax code will be converted to map to the correct new tax code

6. Stocks will be updated to link to the new tax codes

7. Pending pre advices will have the tax & commodity updated from the updated product record