Upcoming DHL export changes regarding CDS -anyone know anything more than I do?!

[DanH]

Hi,

For the past few years DHL has been our main courier for overseas freight.

Two weeks ago we got a rather confusing phone call where DHL told us about upcoming changes, presumably to do with the CHIEF changing to CDS transition. As of sometime in March 2023, as well as the commercial invoice and packing list, they will now require us to manually input line by line into their system, a consignment's products/commodity codes i.e. all information that is already on our commercial invoice and packing list. This would add substantial overhead and margin for error onto our operation as we could have over a hundred lines on any given consignment.

Even after a call from our account manager today, we have scant details about this system but apparently it (might) integrate with popular systems however we use an offline system that is very bespoke to our business so out of the box integration, if and when it exists, will be a non-starter.

I was hoping, rather like what we've done for Click and Drop, there might be some method to upload spreadsheets or CSV files of the required information directly to DHL but apparently that doesn't exist. I say apparently, our account manager doesn't seem well-versed in the changes either!

Anyone know anymore than I do? Is it the same with other well known couriers like Fedex/UPS etc? I was wondering that, if the DHL system is so clumsy, and presuming they pass this data onto CDS on our behalf, is there or will there be a way to upload data to CDS on behalf of a DHL consignment? I would guess all couriers are facing this problem of getting the customs data from the customer to pass it onto CDS in a standard format.

Thanks

Dan

 

[DanH]

An update. We spoke with someone from DHL's Electronic Shipping Solutions last week about a November 9th deadline (and not March 2023!) for providing this extra data for each export shipment. We now have to prepare a CSV file with customs information in it that we can send to them at the same time we upload the commercial invoice and packing list. The CSV seems straightforward, pretty much the same data that is on our commercial invoice, and at least we now have some documentation and a sample CSV to work from. I'm just a bit peeved that the deadline has changed from the original one in March next year giving us a few days to prepare our systems. Couriers, eh?!

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Thanks for the initial post and the update.

How will this change affect your business?

 

[DanH]

Hopefully it won't!

The fear was, and what DHL were initially telling us, was that we'd need to manually input this extra information per consignment on a SKU by SKU basis which would have resulted in a huge staffing overhead when we can ill afford the inefficiency with the extra work involved. I did think that, surely a company the size of DHL would have some swish system in place, but that information was not forthcoming until last week. I would guess the stuff they're showing me regarding CSV upload etc is a bit last minute on their part but at least we now have something to work with. I can get our 3rd party system developers to create something our staff can work with but in the interim it'll be me and an ODBC spreadsheet...!