Ensure your business is ready to get back to work

With the Covid 19 lockdowns, this year has been tough for all working in the construction sector. While some essential sites remained open, many sites have been closed since January. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel with the reopening of all construction sites this week. Now that we are re-opening, you need to ensure that your supply chain/business does not run into any Brexit related issues as you are resuming trade. Since we were locked down, extra paperwork and delays have come into receiving supplies from the UK.

At CIF, we spoke to Phil Demers at Declaron the new Customs Clearance solution, about how construction companies can make sure they are not further delayed by Brexit after the COVID re-opening.

“For me, you need to have these areas covered –

• Have you agreed incoterms (the roles and responsibilities) between you and your connected 3rd parties/suppliers, specifically agree who is responsible for creating and managing declarations and when?
• Do you have an EORI number set up? You should check the European Commission EORI Number Validator to ascertain if you already have an EORI number before you proceed further in this document. The default option will be “IE” followed by your VAT number.
• Do you plan to use a cash upfront (TAN account) or a deferred account method for payment of your duties?
• Do you know the correct tariff classifications for your goods?
• Have you appointed a customs agent to act on your behalf, or taken the relevant steps to assess the financial impact and implemented the resource requirement of an in-house solution?”

Whether you have taken care of these steps yet, or not, Declaron have some recommendations based on what they have seen first-hand.

“The best way to guarantee your goods keep moving is to ensure that you have transparency with and are in control of your customs solution. Our customs software solution –

• Is easy-to-follow and designed for non-customs experts.
• Focuses on ensuring higher quality declarations to deliver first time routing successes.
• Supports of multi-user, multi-stakeholder, and multi-organizational collaboration out of the box.
• Provides real time visibility on movement and status of your goods giving you transparency and control over all your shipments, avoiding downtime
• Online real person customer support and guaranteed support for routing issues to get your goods moving.”

Declaron have helped a number of companies in the construction sector to keep their goods moving post Brexit, if you think their customs solution is the right fit for your business you can contact them at [email protected] or visit www.declaron.ie.