Intrastat, abbreviation for Intra-EU trade statistics serve to record the movement of goods between the member states of the EU. In addition to goods that are bought and sold, Intrastat includes the movement of goods that are moved between EU countries for other reasons. However, the provision of services is not covered in these statistics.
Why is Intrastat reporting needed?
With the establishment of the EU, the original members states became part of the EU internal market and documentation of movement of goods at the borders was not more needed so the information about goods traffic between EU member states was missing. Intrastat was developed to close this gap and replace the missing customs declarations.
EU goods are defined as:
· Goods that are sourced entirely within the EU.
· Goods from countries outside the EU that are in free circulation in the EU.
· Goods that are a combination of the mentioned above.
Companies are obliged to submit a monthly Intrastat declaration. In Germany reports are to be sent to the Statistischen Bundesamt Office. Based in EU regulation No. 638/2004, supplemented by 1982/2004. Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, collects and compiles all data from the statistical offices of the member states.
Which information contains the Intrastat report?
Mandatory and optional elements can be collected in the Intrastat report, between the mandatory elements are:
· The individual identification number allocated to the party responsible for providing information (VAT number)
· The reference period. Calendar month of export or import of goods.
· The direction (arrival or dispatch)
· The 8-digit commodity code
· The partner member state
· The value of goods, being the taxable amount or the invoice amount.
· The quantity of goods
· The nature of the transaction
Additional optional data elements are defined per EU member state.
How is an Intrastat declaration carried out?
Companies that make or receive an intra-Community delivery must provide an Intrastat declaration. In Germany, companies have to transmit these electronically, sending the report to the Statistische Bundesamt. The Statistisches Bundesamt offers 2 differents procedures to send the reports: Through the IDEV/IDES and the eSTATISTIK.core. Here we are going to describe the first case in which we generate with D365 a CSV file with the Intrastat declaration, file that should be uploaded in the web portal provided by IDEV/IDES.
About the sample created for this blog entry
The fictive german company EWR, manufacturer of Wind Turbines, has as provider for Nacelle Covers, the spanish company Estructuras metalicas Fernandez S.A. We will realize some purchases and receptions of material from Spain to Germany and generate the corresponding Intrastat report in the used period.
Needed configuration in Dynamics 365
Foreign trade parameters
When we create a sales order, free text invoice, purchase order, vendor invoice, project invoice, or transfer order, some foreign trade related fields have default values in the document header or on the line. For example the transaction code that we need to set up in the Foreign trade parameters.
In the Intrastat, transfer tab, we need to set up the policy on which item transactions will be recognized as Intrastat relevant transactions. Here for example we define that we are interested in all the transactions that have a commodity code for the item.
In the Intrastat, Electronic reporting tab. We need to select the ER File Format Mapping and Report Format Mapping to be used by the current company. If you cannot select any check if ER is well configured in your system as in some demo systems you need to load the ER reports from the providers.
We need to provide the relation of EU countries, setting up the country of the current company as "Domestic" and the rest as "EU".
Last, we define the Commodity Code Hierarchy and we check if the Foreign Trade parameters number sequences are defined.
Further configuration
Further updated documentation about the configuration needed for Intrastat you will find at the Microsoft Docs - Intrastat Overview, section prerequisites.
Commodity codes
We need to create and manage two product category hierarchies and assign them the category hierarchy role Commodity code hierarchy. One of them we will create with the name Intrastat and in it we will manage the Commodity codes that will be available. This category hierarchy needs to be selected in the Foreign Trade Parameters, Commodity code hierarchy as described above.
For a lists of the possible commodity codes, see the document Warenverzeichnis für die Außenhandelsstatistik, February 2020.
Sample
Once everything is set up we can proceed with a simple sample in which EWR will purchase a nacelle cover from a spanish supplier, receive the order and generate the Intrastat transactions related to this order. Finally an Intrastat report will be generated using Electronic Reporting (ER) that can be uploaded into the authority portal.
First the purchase order is created and we check that the Foreign Trade parameter are filled on the purchase line, Foreign Trade tab.
Next make a receipt of the purchase order. Also may be needed to invoice it if you have setup Intrastat to consider only invoiced purchase orders.
After this we generate the Intrastat transactions for the report in Tax, Declarations, Foreign Trade, Intrastat. Here we execute the [Transfer] button to collect the new transactions. Here as we see below we can decide which transactions to collect.
Finally, with the [Output, Report] action we can generate the output file needed for the declaration using Electronic Reporting. Remember that we have setup it in the Foreign Trade Parameter. In case some values are missing or you need some modifications check first that all the values provided in the corresponding lists (Countries, Commodity Codes, ...) are the standard ones and check the mappings in the ER.
For the case of Germany I use as reference document for good formatting of the CSV files the document "Beschreibung des CSV-Datenimports in die „Intrahandel Formularmeldung“ und „Intrahandel Formularmeldung für Drittanmelder". For other countries check with the corresponding Intrastat office.