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This site was last updated on

01-Okt-2009

System Changes:

Intrastat Submissions: The new Version 2 format of submission now required by HMRC to be used by January 2010 has been programmed, tested, and installed at some clients' systems. If you need the upgrade please contact us on the support line.
Dangerous Goods Notes: We have programmed new print routines for the DGN's to include the new Tunnel codes, although we are waiting for SITPRO to catch up with us and determine  exactly what they require as copyright holders. We do have some leeway however as not all tunnels have been classified and are unlikely to be so until late this year. However we are prepared and as ever we will keep the system up to date.
NES Submissions: The system has been upgraded in light of the security features introduced by HMRC in June 2009
Dangerous Goods Notes: The system has been upgraded to take account of the requirement for Tunnel Restriction Codes introduced in July 2009.

CSV File Extracts: We have been updating the extract routines to include, as the first line of the file, the individual field headings as contained in our master file definition. This should eliminate any problems with mistaken data when going to read the files into another system, or into e.g. Microsoft's Excel software for further manipulation. One point to bear in mind is that if you output the Consignee or Buyer files for editing in Excel, you must ensure that the column with the VAT number must be set as a general format or in the file save process Excel can alter the format of the numbers.
Please note however that if you require special extracts that they are relatively easy to produce, just speak to us on the Support Line to discuss your requirements.

Non-EU Shipment Report: Taking a hint from one of our newer users (MHH Engineering) in order to ensure that a Certificate of Shipment has been received for all non-EC shipments a report has been added to the Reporting by Consignment menu. The printed report can be used as a check list, or the Status field on the Control panel could be used as a marker by adding a code of "COS" when the certificate has been received.

Russian Language Documentation: At the request of one of our users, Benkert UK, we have completed the production of invoice and continuation sheets with Russian language box headings. Already another user has expressed an interest in giving us a full translation of all the English text produced on Commercial  documentation. If you to would like to make use of this enhancement, then please contact us on the Support Line and we will contact you as soon as the task is completed.

Consignee Static Data: In a situation where Formwise is linked to an ERP system there is often no method of downloading new customer and delivery address data from the host system. This is usually manifested by a consignment created from a transfer file purely having the transferred commercial data. Obviously the most important task is to document and move that particular consignment, by completing the data by a combination of merging and entering the data manually. Assuming the data entered into the consignment becomes the standard method of moving future consignments, it would be useful to be able to create a static consignee record from the consignment.  This has been achieved by placing an option on the Tools menu of the toolbar - Create a Consignee from a Job. No references or dates from the job will be copied into the Consignee record.

Quarter ending 31st December 2007

New Export System: The submissions for NES have now been upgraded to meet the requirements of the harmonised system and thus have extra fields added for the number and package type codes as well as the need to give a consignee's address in a specific format. Please check the help available for each field in the database of the system (use the Alt & F1 keys) for a more detailed explanation of the requirements.

XML Readers: We have been working to extend the capability of reading this type of file (Extensible Mark-up Language) where the file contains both the definition and the actual data and this culminated in the reading of transfer files from the SysPro ERP system for MHH Engineering in Guildford. We believe that this is likely to be the main route for reading transfer files and if your company is considering changing its ERP system then be confident that if an XML order/despatch/invoice file in XML format can be created, then Formwise will be able to read the data.

Purchase Orders: From system launch Formwise has been able to create back to back Purchase orders and Invoices and many users have made use of this facility. One perceived weakness is that the system did not cope with multiple purchase orders being raised from one consignment and we have therefore been working to expand the functionality of the system in this area.  

     a     Log a Supplier against a Product Static: As the title says, on the product static and item within a consignment it is possible to store the Supplier code. This is available by a drop-down box which displays a list of all suppliers within the static Suppliers database   

     b     Log a Supplier against an Invoice Item: As described above, it is possible to merge or type in a product within a consignment and then select a Supplier via the drop down box    

     c     Create Multiple Purchase Orders from an Invoice: Previously the recommended way of handling multiple purchase orders was to create individual jobs for each Purchase order and then merge into one consignment to raise the sales paperwork. The procedure now is that having created an order/invoice and its related product lines together with each product's relevant supplier, by clicking on the Tools option on the main toolbar, followed by "Split an Invoice into Purchase Orders", you will then be asked to confirm the consignment to be processed and the system will create a number of purchase order jobs with the consignment reference and a suffix of 001, 002 etc from which Purchase orders can be printed.

Please speak to us on the Support Line if this is of interest to your organisation.

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Quarter ending 30th September 2007

Authorised Economic Operator: The introduction of AEO status is the EU’s response to the need to secure international supply chains and the introduction of Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) in the USA. It is hoped that mutual recognition of similar systems, across other third countries, will take place in the future. US Customs and the European Commission have agreed in principle to work towards mutual recognition of the C-TPAT and AEO systems and pilots are underway with both USA and ChinaAEO is not mandatory. The decision whether an organisation should apply or not is a commercial one, which you need to take once you have assessed the benefits for your business against the costs of applying for, and maintaining, the AEO standard.

The benefits for my company of a security and safety AEO certificate?

• Recognition will enable businesses to have their consignments fast-tracked through customs controls. If a consignment is selected for examination they will receive priority over non-AEOs.

• When the requirement to make pre-arrival/departure summary declarations is introduced in July 2009 AEOs will be able to omit certain data elements from the declaration.

• Recognised status across the EU.  

• Trade consider AEO status an industry 'kite mark' and useful marketing tool.

• Potential, in the future, to have reciprocal arrangements and mutual recognition with countries outside the EU eg USA.

The benefits for my company of a customs simplification AEO certificate?

• Access to certain simplifications in customs procedures such as guarantee waivers and centralised clearance may be restricted to AEOs, although these benefits will not take effect until the Modernised Customs Code is agreed and implemented, possibly in 2010 and are still under discussion.  

• Recognised status across the EU that should make it easier for businesses to apply to use simplifications across the EU.  

• Trade consider AEO status an industry ‘kite mark’ and useful marketing tool.

There will be no loss of existing authorisations or simplifications for traders who do not apply. Current clearance times in the UK for businesses that do not have AEO status will not be affected. We will ensure that Formwise will output any messages and or returns which are applicable, and if you are going to proceed with an application, please contact us on the Support Line

Dangerous Goods Notes (Marine): Thanks to a prospective user of Formwise, it was noticed that we did not have the capability of printing, where appropriate, the cube of each hazard, merely the total for all hazards. As no-one has reported this oversight we can only assume that "where appropriate" is not very often. However the print routines have been upgraded to resolve the problem.

European Sales Listing: At the beginning of the single European Market, HMRC allowed the printing of a laser version of the ESL (VAT Form 101) on to plain paper. Even when the private printing of the Supplementary Statistical Declaration was no longer allowed, HMRC continued to allow the use of a laser printed form for the ESL.  We were fortunate enough to be one of the first to test the alternative of a CSV upload for the ESL, and when there was a problem with the upload of the CSV file, HMRC were kind enough to allow us to email users’ files and they entered them manually into their own systems. However staff time for data input is no longer available and HMRC are therefore withdrawing the use of a stationery input of the ESL submission. From August onwards HMRC require the submission of ESL data via the CSV upload method. As we say, we were one of the first to set up this facility, and over the last few years it has been used with very few problems. Therefore we are advising any Formwise user who at present prints their Sales Listing from Formwise to have in place this method of entry ready by the 1st August. This requires a login account with the Government Gateway. The option to print the laser format will therefore be removed from the reporting menu in due course.  If you have any query as to how to go about this then please contact us on the Support Line.

NES Submissions: We are still working on the revised message, and as we suspected the structure of the Consignee's name and address in the declaration is proving to be a major stumbling block. The technical specification of the message insists that the consignee's name and address be structured as follows:-

Name - 35 characters

Road - 35 characters

Town - 35 characters

Post Code - 9 characters (WITH NO PUNCTUATION), and finally

Country code - 2 characters

For those of you who maintain the standard 5 x 35 characters, that represents no problem for the first 3 lines, and the country code is the standard 2 characters which you are already inputting. The problem is that we know that many of you are using the facility to change the font size and therefore increase the field size to as much as 53 characters. The NES consignee structure quite obviously cannot be that print on all documents and we therefore are faced with non-standard data for the NES message.

We did propose to add a new field for the post code to the Consignee Data Sheet, which could then be replicated on the NES message tab in the Browse/Amend/Create Consignment data sheets. This will become a mandatory field but only on the NES message tab and therefore output for the NES message

The address is however more of a dilemma and we are minded to output just the first 35 characters of the first three lines of the Consignee box and provide this data as that part of the message. It does mean however the data on the SAD Copy 3 equivalent and the paperwork will not agree.

Having tested many submissions, we find that the consignee address data is not being validated, to the point that a submission with no post code entered was rejected, but a further submission containing "CRxxPCODE" was accepted.

This has coloured our impression of the amendments required to the submission, and we do not see the sense of forcing you to re-format an address, and propose therefore to output the message as follows:-

Name: the first 35 characters of line 1 of the consignee address

Road: the first 35 characters of line 2 of the consignee address

City: the first 35 characters of line 3 of the consignee address

Postcode: the first 9 characters of line 4 of the consignee address

If you wish to be absolutely accurate you will need to format the consignee address as above with the country on line 5, but unlike HMRC we realise that this may not always be possible.

Quarter ending June 30th 2007

NES Submissions: These submissions were due to change on 1st July in line with the SAD Harmonisation process, but this has now been put back until November. Work is proceeding with the necessary changes, eg to include the consignee's name and address. However the sting in the tail is the need to structure the address into name, road, town, post code and country, which could materially affect the way users input the consignee within the Formwise software and we will be consulting with those NES users in the coming weeks. There will also be a requirement to include the coding for the number and kind of packages, which has already been completed in our test system. Whilst this sounds relatively simple, the message demands the number and type of packages by commodity code. and we are attempting to discover the methodology for reporting of one package containing a number of commodity codes. Watch this space!

Consignment Reference Drop Down: Mike Roome at Outokumpu asked for a change to our code so that the references in the drop down were displayed in reverse order. This was especially useful as all the references were numeric and therefore the latest number was displayed first in the list. If this could prove useful to you, then please do not hesitate to call us on the Support Line.

Dangerous Goods Notes: The system has been updated ready for the layout of data required from July. The new format and samples contained within the SITPRO guidelines uses simple descriptions and we think opens the door to confusion, especially where the description is for "NOS" chemicals.  In order to remove doubt about the display of data we have revised the standard marine DGN to have columns, in the correct order. The print routines assume that you are using the red-flashed paper for both marine and IATA notes/declarations, which we now have a limited quantity in stock. Please contact us on the Support line if you have any query.

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Quarter ending March 31st 2007

e-Cert and e-Cert eXpress: This is a method of applying for Certificates of Origin on-line and Version 2 was launched in early 2003, with e-Cert eXpress being launched in November 2005. This allows the exporter to apply for a certificate on-line, the Chamber can now check, approve and stamp the Certificate of Origin electronically and return it direct to the exporter on-line. The exporter can then print it out on their own premises. The file is now complete and tested and we now understand that there will be no fees for "checking" the file. In fact the British Chambers of Commerce are actively seeking users. Answers to frequently asked questions can be viewed at

www.i2i-secure1.co.uk/ecertsupport/FAQ.htm.

Approval is also being sought from the relevant authorities to also offer a service for the printing of EUR1 and ATR1 documents. If this is something you would be interested in, then please contact the Support Line immediately. Watch out for more details.

Chamber of Commerce e-Cert & e-Cert eXpress: We are pleased to report that the cost of checking the transfer file from the Formwise system has now been withdrawn and therefore there is no system cost in using the service with your local chamber of commerce to apply for and with the eXpress service, to print certificates of Origin on your local printer. Hopefully in the near future approval will be given to use the service for the production of EUr1's and ATR1's so if you wish to take the first steps please contact us on the Support line to discuss the procedure.

European Reporting: With the accession to the European Union of Bulgaria and Rumania, the Intrastat and Sales Listing routines have been updated. HM Revenue and Customs IT, unknown to our normal contacts also updated their routines for the reading of CSV uploads in respect of country codes for Greece, where we have the unusual scenario of two country codes EL (acceptable for both country and VAT) and GR (only for VAT). HMRC software was amended so that it no longer did an automatic conversion from EL to GR. That conversion has now been added to Formwise so please continue to use EL as the country code for Greece.

Although we were told that our VAT 101 form was acceptable, we would be unaffected by a decision to refuse private prints of the ESL format. However one user, hard luck on Angela at PPG, had their submission rejected and we have therefore updated the print format. Whilst this brings the situation up to date, we would strongly recommend submitting data using the CSV upload option.  If you require more information, please contact us on the Support line.

Country Codes: The country code for Montenegro has now been changed from YU to ME and Formwise selection list has been amended. We cannot do a global change as the code YU still continues for Yugoslavia so for reporting purposes you may have to go through old consignments and change the code to maintain data integrity.

Dangerous Goods Notes: In the light of changes to ADR and IMDG regulations, regarding the order in which data is presented we have amended the print routines. We would now strongly recommend the use of our front and continuation sheets printed on to red-flashed paper, as these documents cope with a situation where there are multiple hazards within a consignment. To cope with the situation where there is only one or two hazards within a consignment, we will produce a print where those items appear on the front page. This should allow you to select the front and continuation DGN and leave it to the system to print the required document(s) in much the same way as invoice printing. Please note that we have a stock of red flashed paper. Please call the support line for details.

EUR1:

a          We have changed the print on the reverse so that only first four digits of the commodity codes print.

b          In the EUR1 section of the Other documents tab within Browse/Amend/Create Consignments you will find a new check box so that you can confirm that the consignment has mixed origin or non-qualifying goods within the consignment. This will then add the statement "Goods marked * on the invoice are non-originating", and you will need to add the asterisk to those products on the invoice continuation page.

The declaration on the Air Export Consignment Shipping Instructions and Air Export Consignment note has been updated to fall in line with the Department of Transport's ruling that "Known Cargo" should now be known as "SPX Cargo".

Alternate ECSI format: Originally this form was produced to allow the submission of an ECSI with a general goods description and the briefest of data about the various commodity codes. The format allowed for up to 24 commodity codes to be displayed. We were certain that hits would be adequate, but you can probably guess that someone has breached that boundary, and the print routines have been amended so that a continuation page and the relevant page number will be printed to cope with this situation.

Administrative Accompanying Document: The print routine has been brought up to date for those of you shipping excise goods.

Total number of packages calculated and printed: We have added a flag to ask the system to total the number of packages from the products into the tariff heading and / or from the tariff to the General Goods description and print that total in front of the general goods description. System total to calculate and print total number of packages. The flag is currently only available on DGN entry format but if you would like to make use of this facility please contact us on the Support line.

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