Data reporting
In the modern global trade environment, having your customs activities in order is crucial in ensuring the smooth and compliant movement of goods across borders. Effective data reporting is essential for monitoring risks, implementing efficient controls, correct reporting towards the customs authorities as well as gaining insights for reporting to higher management. How to leverage data in these areas to enhance the efficiency and security of customs operations.
Monitoring risks and implementing controls
Data plays a fundamental role in identifying and mitigating risks. By ensuring the possibility to generate detailed reports from your systems including customs relevant information. It will enable you to utilize these reports for implementing controls/checks as well as to establish monitoring. Controls can be set up to check whether the company reported towards customs authorities what needs to be reported, if only goods that are in the company’s portfolio have been reported or if only goods that originate from certain countries have been reported, etc. By performing these types of checks any issue will be discovered quickly and action to remedy can be taken immediately.
Reporting to the customs authorities
A company can have one or multiple customs licenses for different customs procedures which can save them considerable amounts in customs duties. A condition for any of these licenses is that a company needs to keep a detailed administration of the goods that are placed under the customs procedure. For customs procedures like inward processing and end-use, periodic reporting towards the customs authorities is a requirement.
Especially where it concerns the periodic reporting, in case of multiple flows of goods with different kinds of goods, it is important to be able to generate detailed reporting from your systems, since the customs authorities require very specific/detailed reporting in relation to the licenses. Basically, one needs to be able to provide a full (administrative) audit trail for the goods placed under a customs procedure. Usually, this data cannot be generated directly or fully from the systems of a company. Even in the case that a company has customs software including a module for the customs procedure inward processing or end-use, the reports generated will not be sufficient and additional developments or manual handlings will be required.
There is tooling available that can assist with connecting and processing the data, like Alteryx or Phyton. PwC has been assisting multiple clients in achieving enormous time savings by utilizing these tools to enable companies to comply with their reporting obligations towards the customs authorities. Next to these huge time savings, automated data reporting is much more reliable, and the risk of manual mistakes is mitigated significantly.
Reporting towards the higher management
For the higher management, data reporting on customs activities provides valuable insights that can assist with strategic decision-making. Data-driven insights from customs activities can inform broader business strategies. This is becoming increasingly important with the ever and rapidly changing trade landscape, not least influenced by the additional tariffs that are being raised globally.
In addition, understanding trade patterns and compliance trends can help companies optimize supply chains, spot opportunities, enhance market competitiveness but also provide the insights required to make supply chains more resilient in the event of sudden changes (like additional tariffs).
How can PwC help?
Data reporting is a powerful tool for enhancing the efficiency and security of customs activities. By leveraging data for risk monitoring, control implementation, and executive reporting, customs authorities and businesses can ensure compliance, streamline operations, and make informed strategic decisions. PwC’s Customs and Trade specialists have extensive knowledge/experience in assisting companies in generating the correct data from their systems to be used for reporting in the different fields indicated above.
PwC also has the capability to assist companies in utilizing additional tooling that will assist them in efficiently being able to report towards the customs authorities, enabling companies to comply with their obligations, while achieving time savings and eliminating the risk of manual errors.
Contact us
Suzanne Bras
Senior Manager Customs & International Trade, PwC Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0)65 395 86 76
