Customs Declarations end-to-end service guide
This guide explains how you can integrate your software with our APIs to complete a customs declaration.
It shows how the APIs fit into various end-to-end user journeys. It is also intended to help software developers, designers, product owners or business analysts understand how your software needs to interact with HMRC systems.
Overview
The Customs Declaration Service (CDS) is replacing the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) with a modern and flexible system that can handle anticipated future import and export growth.
More information about the Customs Declaration Service.
For imports or exports outside of the European Union, there will be differences in the information that needs to be put into declarations. This is due to changes to the UK Trade Tariff required by the Union Customs Code.
End-to-end user journeys
These journeys show examples of use.
- Developer set-up
- submitting import and export customs declarations
- receiving notifications
- uploading supporting documentation
- query declaration status
- inventory linking for export declarations
- making arrival notifications
- validating import movements (CSPs only)
Note: In this guide, links to the documentation for other CDS APIs (except for the Customs Inventory Linking Exports API) will only work when you have signed in to the Developer Hub and registered an application that subscribes to those APIs. For more information, see Developer set-up.
Technical Documentation
This section contains the latest version of the documentation that has been issued to Community System Providers (CSPs) and third-party software developers (SWDs), detailing CDS functionality and how to develop for the service. The documentation includes:
- Technical documentation: documentation and specifications that provide guidance on how to develop for CDS
- CSP-only technical documentation: CSP-only documentation and specifications that provide guidance on how to develop for CDS
- Policy documentation: CDS Tariff (“Paper” tariff) which provides guidance on how to complete a policy-compliant declaration
- Trade Test business documentation: documentation issued specifically for the Trade Test platform, on the scope and functionality available in the trade test environment
The documentation will be updated periodically, with communications being distributed by the Software Developer Support Team to inform users of any changes. The latest version of all documentation can be found in the zip file below.
Please click the link below to download the zip file:
ZIP, 60.7MB last updated 16/05/2024
The zip file contains Office files (files that have .odt, .ods, .odp, .docx and .xlsx file name extensions). Open them in your preferred application.