How we're helping exporters deal with Brexit paperwork

We have been developing a solution, Trader Tap, to help UK and Northern Ireland traders following regulatory changes as a result of Brexit.

If you've been following the media, you'll no doubt be aware of the political and economic friction that currently exists in Northern Ireland.

While we don't claim to fully understand the complexities of the situation - or be able to resolve them -  we do have a number of clients who are affected by the new Brexit processes, and we do have lots of skills and experience in improving efficiencies for businesses.

Currently, companies moving goods from Great Britain and  Northern Ireland, or importing goods from outside the United Kingdom, have to fill out new paperwork. This is being facilitated by the UK Government with the Trader Support Service (TSS).

“If you are a trader or carrier that moves goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, you need to register for the Trader Support Service or make other arrangements to be ready to submit declarations. If you are not ready you will not be able to move goods between the regions.” (Trader Support Service)

Exporters must enter data into the TSS’s web forms when sending goods into Northern Ireland - something which is proving to be a labour-intensive task as each different category of goods needs to be declared separately.   

The categorisation is done via “commodity codes”, and for many exporters, this can mean over 100 separate code declarations for a single consignment (a consignment is a shipment of goods to a single retailer in Northern Ireland).

When you consider that some exporters typically send multiple shipments a week, each with consignments for multiple retailers, this amounts to a significant volume of manual data entry.

Administration for consignments which used to take hours can now take days in some cases.

How we are helping exporters to Northern Ireland

As a technology partner to Sealey Power Tools, we've been working with them develop a solution to help speed up this data entry.

Sealey exports a huge range of professional tools and workshop equipment to different stockists globally, including Northern Ireland, and the new import requirements are placing an additional administrative burden on their export team.

Using Trader Tap, administrative staff upload a simple Excel or CSV file detailing the movement of their goods. This relates to a single shipment or a trailer load of goods destined for retailers in Northern Ireland.  

The system validates the uploaded data for multiple consignments with multiple goods and then automatically validates it against the TSS API.

Our solution captures the outcome, allowing staff to amend any failed records before resubmitting the entire shipment record to the TSS for processing.