DutyDeclared customer case study
Responses provided by Charlie Hall, Mannson Freight
Customer perspective · Freight forwarding
We wanted to bring our entries back in house and start doing them ourselves again. The condition was that we were not going back to doing it the hard way. If we were going to take declarations on internally, we needed software that made the process streamlined and simplified rather than simply moving the workload onto our own team.
“We submit when we need to submit, which matters when a shipment is waiting.”
Charlie Hall · Mannson Freight
Before DutyDeclared we did not prepare or submit our own declarations. Everything went out through an external broker. We gathered the information for each shipment and passed it over, and the broker calculated the duty and VAT and submitted the entries on our behalf.
It worked in the sense that entries were filed, but the whole process sat outside our control. We were dependent on someone else for the classification and calculation work, and for when the entry actually went in.
We wanted to bring our entries back in house and start doing them ourselves again. The condition was that we were not going back to doing it the hard way. If we were going to take declarations on internally, we needed software that made the process streamlined and simplified rather than simply moving the workload onto our own team.
The realistic choice was to carry on with the broker or to bring declarations back in house with the right platform behind us. We went with the second.
DutyDeclared stood out on ease of use. The workspace is user friendly, and that matters a great deal when you are asking your own team to take on declaration work directly instead of handing it to an agent.
I started by testing a handful of entries with different parameters to see how the system handled them. Once I was satisfied, we made the switch at the beginning of August.
There were a few hiccups, as you would expect with any new system, but they were rapidly rectified with the support of the DutyDeclared team. That made a real difference to our confidence in the switch. We knew that if something came up it would be dealt with quickly rather than left with us.
Two changes stand out. The first is cost. Because we were paying a broker for every entry, bringing the work in house has produced clear cost savings.
The second is control of our own timelines. We are no longer restricted by how busy the broker happened to be on any given day. We submit when we need to submit, which matters when a shipment is waiting.
Alongside that, the workspace itself is user friendly, which helps our staff work more efficiently. I cannot give exact numbers at this stage, but given how many entries we process the difference is noticeable.
We have been using DutyDeclared for a month and have not had a single HMRC query in that time, which is about the clearest signal we could ask for that entries are going in correctly.
The part that gives us that confidence is the validation. If an HS code is not right, the system will not show you duty and VAT rates against it, so the problem surfaces immediately rather than after the event. Being able to catch issues before an entry goes to HMRC is paramount for us.
The team is the thing I would highlight first. If an issue or a query comes up, the people at DutyDeclared are very helpful and they have the knowledge to actually assist rather than simply log it.
I would also be straight about the fact that the system had some teething problems. What matters is what happened next. When we raised them, their technical team got to work straight away and kept us updated on progress throughout. For anyone weighing up bringing declarations in house, that kind of responsiveness is what you want from the people behind the software.
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