The Scottish DRS scheme is due to come into force in July 2022 and I wondered if there was any planned functionality to help with managing DRS tracking/requirements? Full details of requirements are not available yet from SEPA (enforcement authority) but it would be helpful if Breww could add the 20p deposit for Scottish customers and provide traceabilty.
Hi Hazel,
Thanks for the suggestion. Weâd love to support this, especially as itâs expected to come to the rest of the UK at some point, and many other European countries have a similar scheme.
It would be great to get some input from yours and other breweries on how youâd like it to work. Would you like the deposit charge to be automatically added to each product, or to be added separately to an invoice? How would you like to record the deposit return, would a credit note work for you? What reporting would you require? Something to report on how many deposits you took and how many you paid back would be good. A few of these features may depend on the full details, once released.
Any input would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Matt
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I donât have full details of the scheme yet in terms of administration requirements but I think it would be best to have the system detect a Scottish customer based on postcode and automatically add the deposit which could be overridden if needed. The returns side I donât understand so well yet. Also it gets complicated because some of our trade customers in England would in turn sell back to ScotlandâŚ
If any other Scottish breweries who are using Breww already (we are in the process of migrating) have any ideas on this it would be helpful. Otherwise we can pick up nearer the time once more details are known.
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Hi, curious about updates on this - as here in NL a deposit scheme on cans comes into force officially from 01/0/23 - with a lead in period from 10/22. Also lacking some info still on the practicalities.
Moreover here returnable kegs are always supplied with a deposit attached and we are investigating a move from one-way. So hoping both these will be available somewhere this year?
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Hi,
we are moving faster than expected on this timeline so I will be having to implement a deposit scheme for kegs pretty soon - I will be able to implement this via the service products.
But it would be ideal if a deposit is automatically added to the invoice when selecting a product in a returnable container. The return of a container would automatically generating a credit note that can be used against a next order.
Curious where this is on your roadmap.
Best,
Gijs
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As we just ordered 140 kegs which will be part of a DRS I am more and more hear if this is in the pipeline or we have to devise a different system. Hope to hear.
G.
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Hi,
Is there any news on this?
We are currently using a separate deposit product and creditnotes to deal with the DRS.
While a decent temp solutions it is not ideal:
- There is a risk that deposit products are forgotten as they need to be manually put it in instead of auto-connected to products.
- the deposit is counted as revenue in the stats even though it is not
- While the new returned containers report helps for a good overview to credit kegs it would be more ideal to have it automated a bit more.
- Manual credit invoices is a bit of a hassle for us and the customer - ideally this would be automated and maybe even connected with newer invoices.
FYI currently our country will have a DRS on cans implemented in march 2023.
So curious where you are guys are at
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We are also starting to get more information coming through on the scheme for Scotland which will now go live in August 2023. We know we need to be able to apply the 20p deposit at point of sale for those customers in Scotland (also incurs VAT). We know we need to report monthly how much product is destined for Scotland to the scheme. Whilst the rest of the UK goes live with the scheme later than Scotland, any producer/retailer selling in to Scotland will need to do the same.
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Thanks Gijs and Hazel for the comments here, itâs all really useful.
Weâve not got a date on this just yet, but donât worry, itâs on the radar. We will let you know when we have a further update.
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I have now attended a few information sessions on the scheme and have more detail on what sort of requirements we would have from Breww for management and reporting within the scheme. How is best to share these requirements?
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Here would be great if thatâs ok, Hazel? This way others can see it and suggest ideas for solutions/implementation too. Thank you.
This is something that weâre keen to get to soon.
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Great, here goes! (apologies for the long post in advance, and please correct anything iâve picked up wrong). Some of the finer details are still being worked on but this is my understanding.
The scheme goes live in Scotland in August 2023 with producer registration between Dec 2022 -Feb 2023
The producer is responsible for registering their âarticlesâ (SKUs under the scheme) as various types (old, retained, new) and whether they are Scotland or UK wide SKUs. Various charges/surcharges apply to the producer depending on the type of article. In effect, every article that is put on the market in Scotland from 16th August 2023 comes under the scheme, but some product in the supply chain can still be sold through (as long as it was put to market before that date)
We will need to report monthly (like beer duty) the number of scheme articles that have been sold to Scotland (to consumer, retailer, wholesaler, distributor etc). The consumer bit is easy as the POS application could pick up customer address, but destination of products after sale from producer to B2C has to be provided by the business buying the product e.g. a supermarket or beer subscription business would have to tell us how much of the product is destined for Scottish customers. They have to estimate/advise how much is destined for Scotland and it would be good if Breww could capture this information for the report.
Ideally Breww have the scheme article types (old, retained, new) in the product data form which would categorise it in the report (and also for general reporting would be able to have that field to split data for Scottish and rUK SKUs). Breww would also need to be able to sum up the number of articles sold to Scotland (either automatically from POS information or an input field for invoices/sales done manually) along with the calculation of charges.
The sales data would ideally segregate product sales from DRS income.
All breweries selling in to Scotland will need to comply, not just Scottish producers.
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Great to hear this is on the map. status is a bit confusing here in the Netherlands as there is bickering between the government who wants it implemented sooner than feasible.
Anyway. An english overview of the current plans in NL can be found here: https://craftbrouwers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Inbelsessie_statiegeld_blik_28.06.22ENG.pdf
What is needed from breww is the ability to automatically attach the deposit to products/container types - mentioned seperately on the invoice.
These costs are excluded from the revenue data and connected to seperate accountancy ledgers.
A good way to overview the amounts so that is easy to generate a report that can be communicated to the right people. There is a small producers fee connected to the deposits - maybe you can look at a way to monitor this as well.
just for the record we use two types of Deposits then - one for our own kegs (that do not need reporting) and one for cans/bottles - which do need reporting.
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Thanks, @hazel-meehan and @gijs-van-wiechen this is really useful information - especially with details on two different countryâs schemes as hopefully, we can build something that covers all these bases and then when this (presumably) hits England in the future, weâll have a framework in place. I must admit, Iâve got more to read on this but here are some initial questions/ideas that it would be useful to get your thoughts/feedback on.
Is the âold, retained, newâ bit here purely for the transition into the scheme and handling what was already put to market before the date? In the fullness of time, everything sold will be ânewâ?
Iâm thinking that we allow you to define your own deposit types (such as âbottle depositâ, âcan depositâ, âown keg depositâ or even âScotland bottle depositâ vs âEngland bottle depositâ), the amount to charge as the deposit for each type (and the applicable tax rate). These can later be reported on. Hopefully, this would allow you to define any schemes that were needed and allow you to be flexible as things potentially change in the future, or you move into other markets with different schemes.
We would also add the ability to attach to a product any number of DRS rules. For a rule you could specify:
- Destination delivery country (or countries) to apply to
- Customer types (or all customer types) to apply to
- Applicable âdeposit typeâ (as per your own definitions)
- Quantity of deposit to apply (typically would be one)
We could have gone with container types instead of products, but I think linking deposits to products allows you to be more flexible.
You could sort the rules by their âpriorityâ. When creating an order, we would go through all the products and determine their deposit requirements. If there were multiple rules on a single product, as soon as a ruleâs criteria matched the order (delivery country/customer type), this rule would be used and subsequent rules would ignored. The deposit would need to be recalculated whenever:
- The products on the order were changed
- The delivery address was changed
- The customer an order is linked to was changed (or the customerâs customer type was changed)
On this point - as you need to charge your customers for the deposits, I presume this charge must be added to their invoice and increase the value of the invoice. We could have this added as its own line below the product sub-total, much like how a delivery charge appears. This would then allow you to choose an account in your accountancy integration settings, as you can for other types of âAdditional charge accountsâ, such as delivery. Would this cover whatâs needed?
Would you need to specify different accounts/ledgers for different âdeposit typesâ as Iâve suggested above? Or could all types of âdeposit typeâ go through to the same accountancy account?
Finally, how do you think credits should work? I guess when a tracked container is returned, if this had a âdepositâ against it, that could automatically trigger a credit note (this should probably be a setting you can enable/disable). How would credits for bottle deposits work? Would you want to be raising credit notes for individual bottles sold in your own tap rooms? What about those sold on your website to end consumers? And finally, those sold to the trade, such as wholesalers or bars.
If a credit note was raised, then Automatically apply credit notes would work well with this.
There are still a number of projects in the list above this, but we are keen to ensure this is done before too long. If anyone else would like to see this, please do give this a vote too.
Please let me know what you think about the above points/ideas/suggestions and if anyone else is reading this and would like to contribute, please do reply below.
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They need to be variable I think. We have two types of deposit. One is âinternalâ (for kegs). The other (cans) is external and needs to be reported on. we also are charged an extra fee.
Finally, how do you think credits should work?
An automatic credit note would work - but than it also needs to be automatically emailed and canât be obviously for each container. In that sense Iâd rather have a good overview page that shows what is returned, if it is already credited and a one click way to easily generate the credit notes.
For cans deposit we wonât actually be taking them back in. This is handled separately here.
I am unclear what this means for internal sales (taproom/webshop) over here.
Hope this helps
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Thanks for this Gijs, it looks like youâve linked to a file in your own email account, which we cannot access. Could you upload the file here, or to Google Drive and link to it here?
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hmmm. It is supposed to be in a public drive. does this link work for you? Overig â Google Drive
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Yes, perfect, thank you 
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Weâve been looking at this project recently and have a question that it would be great to get your thoughts on, @gijs-van-wiechen and @hazel-meehan.
If a deposit was taken on one of your own tracked kegs/casks, Breww will know when this is returned and can record that itâs been returned (and allow a credit note, reporting, etc). Do you need to take back empty non-returnable containers (such as cans/bottles or even NR casks/kegs) ever? And if so, how would you envisage entering this information into Breww? Go to a customer and add it there?
If Iâve understood this correctly, this wonât be a requirement for you, @gijs-van-wiechen?
@hazel-meehan do you know if youâll need to take in and return/credit deposits for cans?
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