What is Intrastat?

Intrastat is the statistical declaration used by EU member states to collect data on the physical movement of goods between member states.  Monthly intrastat declarations are a legal obligation for many businesses although the thresholds that govern whether a business must submit a declaration can vary by member state.

The minimum required data that needs to be reported as part of the intrastat declaration includes:

  • VAT number
  • Whether intra-EU import or export
  • Commodity code
  • The partner Member State
  • Value and quantity of the goods
  • The nature of the transaction, e.g. direct sales, purchases, returns

In addition, there are additional optional data elements that require reporting depending on the relevant authority which can include, but not limited to: country of origin of arrival, delivery terms, region of origin etc.

Intrastat Support in ByDesign

Intrastat support in SAP Business ByDesign was withdrawn by SAP in 2015.  Prior to this SAP provided support for selected countries only: Germany; Great Britain; Austria; France and Italy with any additional countries requiring a custom solution provided by partners.  Since the withdrawal of support by SAP, customers can continue to use the standard intrastat declaration functionality for these previously supported countries, but any legal changes will not be updated by SAP within the system and can only now be fully supported via a partner solution.

Our Solution

InCloud Solutions has developed, in collaboration with some of our customers, our own intrastat declarations solution built using the SAP Cloud Application Studio. The solution captures all the required data from your deliveries (inbound, outbound and third party) and invoices (customer and supplier) including service confirmations, as required.

SAP Business ByDesign intrastat declaration screenshot

Within a single screen available from the ByDesign menu, you can quickly and easily pull together all the relevant transactions for the month for which you are submitting your declaration, extract to CSV or XML for review and with built-in support for the German IDEV format you are also able to directly upload to the German authorities.

As we have built the solution from the ground up, we can easily add additional export formats for different authorities or specific formats for your own internal use because all the relevant data is captured and only those matching the analysis filters is exported.  This means that if you need to add an additional intrastat declaration for another EU country, for example due to business growth pushing you over the reporting threshold, you do not need to purchase another solution and can simple change the analysis filters dramatically reducing the time required collecting and organising your system data.

What about Brexit?

Assuming the European Parliament approves the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK will formally leave the EU on 31st January 2020 however it will remain in a transition period until 31 December 2020 whilst a new trade agreement is negotiated.  During this transition period the UK’s will remain in the EU VAT regime and so we believe it is reasonable to expect that Intrastat reporting will continue during this transition period.  At present the SAP provided intrastat functionality for intrastat continues to work for the UK so you can continue using that unless there is a legal change.  Once the UK leaves the EU VAT regime, intrastat declarations will no longer be required as the UK will no longer be a member state for these purposes.  At this stage we do not know what HMRC will require, post-Brexit, but as our solution captures all the relevant data, we can easily extend our solution to support whatever UK trading statistics reporting requirements may be implemented.