Declaration structure

The content and structure of the CDS declaration are visible in the bottom tabs of the screen when a declaration is selected in the top grid. The declaration has many fields and levels so this may initially look overwhelming but the structure is quite logical and becomes familiar quite quickly, and not all of the fields are mandatory for all declaration types, we only populate what’s actually required.

Declaration (top level)

…contains…

Shipment 1
- Item line 1
- Item line 2
- Item line 3
Shipment 2
- Item line 1
- Item line 2…

Declaration

Shipments & Items

Imagine an import shipment before it physically arrives to the country and the declaration structure makes more sense. The declaration is a message which contains information about a number of shipments (each with their own information) and each of those shipments can contain a number of items or products.

Although the declaration appears to permit multiple shipments, and multiple items per shipment this isn’t actually supported in some declarations (such as our import declaration with CPC 0771), so for those do not expect to see any grouping.

Instead you’ll see only 1x item per shipment and 1x shipment per declaration.

Declaration (top level)

Summary information about the declaration includes important information such as the declaration type.

For each of these (Declarant / Agent / Exporter) if the ID is provided then the name and address are not needed, and vice versa.

Contains the authorisation numbers issued to your warehouse in the bottom left grid, above we can see:

CGU: Customs guarantee
CW1: Customs warehouse
DPO: Deferment
EXW : Excise warehouse

There are many codes used throughout the screen which users may not be familiar with, when editing the declaration if you click into the field the descriptions for all options are usually displayed.

Shipment(s)

The UCR Ref ID is the system created unique ID for the shipment. Click View/Edit to open the screen showing all of the shipment fields:

The ‘Importer’ usually shows your customers information while the ‘Goods Location’ shows the warehouse site address.

Item(s)

Click View/Edit to open the screen showing all of the fields relating to that item:

Commodity information is shown in the top left with the measures to the right.

Additional/Previous document shows the import documentation/certificates received with the goods, this is used for the EUR1 & organic certificates among others. For these the ID and status code (LPCO Exemption Code) are usually required.

This is where the Customs Procedure Code (CPC) is stored, this tells customs the type of movement / transaction we want to perform.

Preference types stores if a preference / quota / neither / other is being used for the declaration.

If a quota is being used (such as 320), then the quota number should appear in the ‘Quota Order ID’ alongside.