If you sell online and your customers are spread across Great Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe, you have probably felt the change in the last few years. Orders that used to move on a single label now need declarations. Customers who used to pay one price at checkout are being asked for duty and VAT on the doorstep. And a lot of businesses have ended up holding two piles of stock, one for each side of the water, just to keep things moving.
We work with brands in exactly that position every day, and most of the problems come down to three things: customs paperwork, unexpected charges for the customer, and stock in the wrong place. This guide walks through each of them and what you can do about it. Nothing here is legal advice, but it is the practical picture as we see it from the warehouse floor in Belfast.
What actually changed for parcels
Before 2021, a parcel from Manchester to Munich was a domestic movement as far as customs were concerned. Now it is an export from Great Britain and an import into the EU. That means:
- Every parcel needs a customs declaration with a commodity code, value, weight and country of origin for each item.
- Goods over the EU's low value threshold attract import duty, and all goods attract VAT in the destination country unless it has been collected already.
- The carrier or a broker handles the clearance, and somebody has to pay for that work.
- Delivery times stretch, because parcels sit in clearance queues, and a percentage of them get held or returned when the paperwork is wrong.
The same thing happens in reverse. A brand in Dublin or Rotterdam selling into Great Britain has the same declarations, the same VAT questions and the same delays, just pointing the other way.
Tip 1: Decide who pays the duty before the customer does
The single biggest cause of bad reviews we see from cross-border sellers is the surprise charge. The customer pays you at checkout, then a week later gets a text from the courier asking for another twenty or thirty euros before the parcel will be released. Many refuse it, the parcel comes back, and you have paid shipping twice for a refund.
There are two ways to handle this:
- Delivered Duty Paid (DDP). You pay the duty and VAT up front, usually through the carrier, and build it into your price. The customer sees one figure and gets their parcel with no surprises. It costs you more per order but conversion and repeat rates are noticeably better.
- Delivered At Place (DAP). The customer pays on arrival. Cheaper for you on paper, and fine for high value B2B orders where the buyer expects it, but rough for consumer parcels.
Whichever you choose, say so clearly on the product page and at checkout. People are forgiving of costs they were told about and unforgiving of ones they were not.
Tip 2: Get the data right at source
Customs declarations are only as good as the product data behind them. Most held parcels we see are held because a commodity code is missing or vague, the description says "gift" or "clothing" instead of "women's cotton T-shirt", or the declared value does not match the invoice.
Spend an afternoon on your product catalogue. Give every SKU a proper eight or ten digit commodity code, a plain description in English, a country of origin and a unit weight. Store that in your sales platform so it flows through automatically to whoever prints your labels. It is dull work, and it is the most valuable dull work you will do this year.
Tip 3: Register for VAT where it makes sense
If you sell to consumers across the EU, the Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) lets you collect EU VAT at checkout for consignments under 150 euros and file one return, rather than having VAT collected from the customer on delivery. For GB sales from outside the UK, there is a similar system for low value goods. Your accountant will know which schemes apply to your volumes, but the principle is simple: collecting VAT at checkout is far kinder to the customer than collecting it at the door.
Tip 4: Stop splitting your stock if you can help it
The instinctive fix for all of this is to open a second warehouse. Keep some stock in Great Britain for British customers and some in the EU for European ones, and every parcel is domestic again. It works, but it brings its own problems.
- You are paying two lots of rent, two systems and two teams, and you have to move stock between them, which is a customs movement in itself.
- You forecast twice. Get it wrong and you are out of stock in one country while the same product gathers dust in the other.
- Returns, kitting and quality control happen in two places with two sets of standards.
For a large brand with steady volumes on both sides, a two-site model can still be right. For most growing businesses it is a cost and a headache they would rather not have.
Tip 5: Look at where Northern Ireland sits
This is the part most people have not heard about, and it is why we are writing this. Under the current trading arrangements, Northern Ireland stays inside the UK while continuing to follow EU rules for goods. In practice, for a parcel leaving our warehouse in Belfast, that means:
- To Great Britain: goods move as normal UK domestic post. No export declaration, no duty, no delay at a border.
- To Ireland: no customs, because there is no customs border on the island. Next day services with An Post and DPD are routine.
- To the rest of the EU: treated as goods moving within the EU's customs area. No declarations, no duty, no VAT collected on the doorstep.
So one stock holding in Belfast can serve all three markets without the customer ever seeing a customs charge. You forecast once, you count stock once, and your returns all come back to the same shelf. We wrote more about how this works on our Why Northern Ireland page, and our shipping service covers the carriers we use for each destination.
There is one thing to be honest about. Getting stock into Northern Ireland from Great Britain or from outside the UK does involve paperwork at the goods-in stage, and the rules for that have their own name and their own detail. We deal with it on every inbound delivery and we will talk you through exactly what your supplier needs to provide. It is a one-off piece of work per shipment rather than a piece of work per parcel, which is the whole point.
Tip 6: Choose carriers by destination, not by habit
No single carrier is best everywhere. For Irish deliveries An Post and DPD Ireland are hard to beat. For Germany, France and the Netherlands we lean on DPD, DHL and UPS depending on parcel size and the service the customer has paid for. For Great Britain, Royal Mail and Whistl cover the small parcels and DPD and DHL the tracked, timed ones. A good fulfilment partner will route each order to the right service automatically rather than pushing everything down one pipe.
Tip 7: Keep returns simple
Returns are where cross-border trade gets expensive twice. If your European customers have to post a parcel back to Great Britain, it crosses a border again, with the same declarations and the risk of duty being charged on your own goods coming home. Give customers a return address that does not involve a customs border. For sellers fulfilling from Belfast, that is the same warehouse the parcel left from, whether the customer is in Cork, Cardiff or Cologne.
A quick checklist
- Decide DDP or DAP for each market and say it on the site.
- Give every SKU a commodity code, an honest description, an origin and a weight.
- Talk to your accountant about IOSS and UK low value schemes.
- Count how much money and time a second warehouse would really cost you.
- Consider whether a single base in Northern Ireland would let you serve all three markets from one place.
- Match carriers to destinations.
- Give customers a return address on the right side of the border.
If you want to talk any of this through, that is what we are here for. We have been handling orders for online sellers since 2003 and are registered with the UK Fulfilment House Due Diligence Scheme, so you are dealing with people who do this every day rather than a call centre. Pick a time and we will call you.
