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How to prepare a CBAM Declaration

How to prepare your EU CBAM declaration via CarbonChain

Updated over a month ago

The process for CBAM reporting on CarbonChain is broken down into six steps:

  1. Add details about about your purchased CBAM goods and suppliers onto CarbonChain

  2. Request primary CBAM data from your suppliers or upload it on their behalf

  3. Complete and upload your customs import data template

  4. Resolve any mapping errors

  5. Add supporting documentation

  6. Download your .zip file, and upload to the EU transitional registry

Step 1: Adding your supplier and product information to CarbonChain

Step 1.a Adding supplier information

To track, store, and manage data from your CBAM goods suppliers, we need to know which CBAM goods you purchased who you purchased those products from.

To do this, your first step is to log on to CarbonChain and navigate to the ‘CBAM Suppliers’ page. Once there, select “Add one supplier.”

You will be prompted to add a supplier name and the contact details of a supplier. A “supplier” can either be the counterparty from whom you purchase the CBAM goods (e.g. a trader or distributor) or the actual producer of the goods.

To add or update existing supplier information, refer to our guide here.

Step 1.b Adding product information

The next step is to add details of the CBAM goods which you purchase from each supplier. Each supplier on CarbonChain will have its own page. Navigate to the page and select “Add a CN Code”

You will then be prompted to add a CN code, product name, and installation name for a product. You should add a CN code for each unique CBAM CN code which you purchase from that supplier. If you purchase multiple products with the same CN code from one supplier, but the goods come from multiple underlying installations, add multiple codes and enter the different names for each installation

Step 2: Requesting primary CBAM data from your suppliers

Once you have your supplier and product details set up on the CarbonChain platform, it’s time to start obtaining primary data from them. To do this, you have three options:

  1. Request data from all suppliers via CarbonChain

2. Request data from a single supplier via CarbonChain

If you request data via one of the above options, CarbonChain will automatically send an e-mail to the supplier(s) with a workflow to upload their primary CBAM data for the relevant CN codes.

  1. Request data from a supplier via a personalised email

    1. Select Actions > Request CBAM data > Copy details

    2. Your clipboard will copy details of the CBAM products and underlying installations where you purchase CBAM goods for that supplier

    3. You can paste the copied text into an email and share it directly with your contact

2. If your supplier has already sent you CBAM data, you can also upload it into CarbonChain yourself. To do so, navigate to the supplier’s page and select Actions > Upload CBAM data.

As the supplier(s) upload CBAM data into your CarbonChain platform, the data status on the suppliers page will automatically update. There are three different statuses:

● No data received: In this case, you will see that the Data received column is empty.

● Above 20% default values content: In this case, you will see the Data received column is populated, and the Default data status column says Above 20% and is highlighted yellow.

● Below 20% default values content: In this case, you will see the Data received column is populated, and the Default data status column says Below 20% and is highlighted green.

Your objective at this stage is to get as much primary data for as many of your imported CN codes as possible, ideally with default values content below 20%.

Step 3: Uploading your customs data

At the end of a quarter, it’s time to upload your customs import data for that quarter. To do this, we need you to gather the data for all CBAM goods shipments that have cleared customs in that quarter and populate this template. We have a guide written here to help you. .

Once the template has been filled out, it’s time to upload your data and start a report. To do this, navigate to Report -> Actions -> Start a CBAM declaration. This will open up a new report, and will prompt you to upload the customs data template.

Upload the filled-in template and choose the “Mandatory Fields” worksheet on the file upload. Once the upload is complete, your CBAM quarterly reports section will be populated with the relevant customs data.

Note that your customs data can be uploaded at any time throughout a quarter. We recommend uploading your data towards the end of the quarter so that you only have to resolve mapping errors once, but it is entirely up to you.

Step 4: Resolve any mapping errors

Once your customs data template has been uploaded, you will see how well your customs data has mapped to the supplier information in the CBAM Suppliers module. We map your customs data template to supplier data on the basis of supplier name, installation name and CN code. If any suppliers have not been mapped correctly, you will see a warning message like this:

This will mean you need to do one of three different things:

  1. Update the supplier name in your customs data template: You can do this if the supplier name you provided in your customs data template does not match the supplier name in the CBAM Suppliers module.

  2. Update the supplier name in CBAM Suppliers: This is an alternative option if the supplier name you provided in your customs data template does not match the supplier name in the CBAM Suppliers module.

  3. Add a new supplier: You will need to do this if you have included a supplier in your customs data template that is not in your CBAM Suppliers module. To do this, you can use the supplier upload feature shown below:

There can also be a possibility that the installation names in your customs data template don’t match with the installation names as provided by your supplier. In that case, you will see a warning message like this (see the tooltip for CN code 73182900):

In this case we recommend the following steps:

  1. In the CBAM declarations section, click on the supplier name. This will take you to the suppliers module where you can find the list of installations added by the supplier

  2. Copy the correct installation name for a given CN code from the suppliers module to your customs data template

  3. Reupload the template to enable matching with your supplier’s data

Step 5: Add supporting documentation

CarbonChain’s platform allows you to attach supporting documentation to your CBAM reports. There are two scenarios in which we recommend attaching supporting documentation:

  1. You have requested primary data from a supplier, and they have not responded: To show your best efforts in accessing primary data, we recommend attaching a .pdf outlining the steps you have taken to obtain primary data from a given supplier. CarbonChain automatically logs the timestamps of emails you have sent to suppliers for data and includes those timestamps in your CBAM report, but attaching a .pdf with more details of the steps you have taken is strongly recommended.

  2. You have uploaded primary data on behalf of your supplier: In the case of filling out a summary communication sheet on behalf of a supplier, we recommend attaching any documents that you used to support that process. This could include any e-mails received from your supplier, or any .pdf’s sent to you by your supplier which provided you with the necessary data.

All supporting documentation is attached in the Report module, at a Supplier/CN code level. For more information, refer to our guide.

Step 6: Downloading your .ZIP file, and submitting your report

Once you have successfully engaged with your suppliers, uploaded your customs data template, resolved any mapping errors, and attached supporting documentation, it’s time to download your .zip file and submit it to the transitional registry.

Included in your .zip file you will find:

● Your .XML file

● Any supporting documentation

To upload your report to the transitional registry, please follow our guide here.

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