On March 31, 2017, the President of the Republic of Poland signed the Act on the Monitoring System for the Road Carriage of Goods. The so-called transport package is a tool for fighting with dishonest entities that illegally trade in liquid fuels, vegetable oils, fully denatured alcohol and dried tobacco, among other things, or fraudulently obtain a tax on goods and services. On April 3, the Act was published in the Journal of Laws and came into force 14 days after its publication.

What does the new Act regulate?

The Act defines the obligations of the sending and receiving entity, the carrier and the drivers, regarding the carriage of goods by road and the liability for their breach. First and foremost, it is necessary to submit a notification about the carriage of goods that involve a high risk of tax fraud (“sensitive goods"), as well as to provide and update data in the notification.

The obligation of submitting a notification does not apply to the carriage of these goods in postal consignments subject to the procedure of excise duty suspension using the EMCS system, or to products that are traded with third countries and declared for a customs procedure or re-export, excluding goods admitted to trading in the customs territory of the European Union.

The failure to fulfil these obligations results in penalties. Penalties will be imposed as of May 1, 2017. A transition period was supposed to allow entities involved in the carriage of goods to comply with the new regulations.

Obliged entities
Sending entity – a natural or legal person or an organizational unit without legal personality, conducting business activities, carrying out supplies, intra-Community supply of goods and exportation.
Receiving entity – a natural person, legal entity or an organizational unit without legal personality, conducting business activities, carrying out intra-Community acquisition of goods, importation of goods or acquisition of goods in the case of supply of goods within the meaning of the Act of 11 March 2004 on the Goods and Services Tax.
Carrier – a natural person, a legal person or an organizational unit without legal personality, conducting business activities, carrying out the transportation of goods.
Specific obligations have been imposed on each of these entities. More information: https://puesc.gov.pl/e-przewoz
Penalties
The provisions of the Act provide for penalties for failure to fulfil them.
If the carrier fails to submit a notification or it is found out that the goods do not match the parameters indicated by the carrier in the notification, the carrier will be charged a financial penalty of PLN 20,000.
In addition, when the carrier fails to include in the notification the data referred to in Art. 5 sec. 4 and Art. 6 sec. 3, a financial penalty of PLN 5,000 will be imposed also on the carrier.
In addition, if the carrier fails to comply with the obligation to update the data in the notification or submits data inconsistent with the factual state, other than those relating to the goods, a financial penalty of PLN 10,000 will be imposed on the carrier.
An important element of the entire system will be the reference number that the carrier should receive prior to commencing the carriage.
Any carriage performed without this reference number will be fined.  In the event that it is determined during an inspection that the carriage of goods was started by the driver without the reference number, without the document replacing the notification and the confirmation of receipt of the document replacing the notification or the inter-warehouse transfer document, the driver will be subjected to a fine in the amount of PLN 5,000 to 7,500.

SENT system for handling “sensitive goods”

For the purposes of implementing the provisions of the Act, a register of SENT notifications has been created. It is maintained in an ICT system and is designed to enable notifications to be submitted electronically. This will enable the data required by the Act to be sent immediately, which will not affect the flow of trade in the goods mentioned in the Act. Entities will access this register for purposes of sending, completing and updating goods carriage notifications via the Electronic Services Portal of the Customs Service (PUESC or SEAP) located at https://puesc.gov.pl.

New requirements, new functionalities

New requirements mean that companies need to adapt SAP systems to enable the generation and transfer of data to the SENT system in the form expected by the National Tax Administration. Therefore, SNP Poland offers companies SNP SENT, a unique extension to the SAP ERP system, and a service of SNP SENT and/or SAP system customization to the company’s specific processes to meet the new legal requirements. The essence of the system customization is the collection and preparation of data as well as the transfer of the notification to the SENT system according to the communication procedure specified by the Ministry of Finance.

What we offer

The SNP offer includes a proprietary solution that consists of three components:

1. SNP SENT – a solution for generating notification content (in XML format) and its transfer to the SENT system. It consists of two parts:

  • Generator – a part of the solution running in the SAP ERP system, which generates the content of SENT notifications according to the guidelines of the National Tax Administration as set out in the Act.
  • Transfer – a part of the solution running outside the SAP system, which integrates with both the Generator and other ERP systems (not only SAP ERP). It is responsible for transferring and checking the status of notifications sent to the SENT system, both through the basic Web-service interface and email (in the event of failure of the PUESC/SEAP platform, on which SENT is running, entities are obliged to send notifications through this channel). In addition, it enables reference numbers (keys) to be sent by email to the notification parties (carriers, recipients).

2. Integration with SNP SENT – a service of integration of the SNP SENT system with the IT systems of the customer’s business partners (carriers, receiving entities) via the Web-service interface and SMS notifications with the reference number (key) of the notification.

3. Manufacturer’s Support for SNP SENT, with a monthly pool of support hours. Manufacturer’s Support is necessary to obtain the right to updates and our support.

4. Customization of SNP SENT to the company’s individual requirements – a service involving the definition of the scope of system modifications required to automate the collection of data on transfers and filling the structure with notification data. The result of the work will be the concept of changes and the estimation of costs of related workload.

SNP SENT Generator

Generator is a part of the solution running in the SAP ERP system that generates the content of SENT notifications according to the guidelines of the National Tax Administration as set out in the Act.

In the ERP system, we define the mechanisms that qualify the documents to be submitted. This task is part of the analysis and customization of the system. Then the document data is aggregated and converted to the format required in electronic communication with the SENT system. Prior to sending a notification, you can view the data in the administrator’s console dedicated for this purpose.  In this console, you can send notifications and view their statuses.

SNP SENT Generator allows you to:

  1. manage the list of sensitive goods (table);
  2. collect transaction data (shipments and orders) from SAP;
  3. generate XML messages and pre-validate notification data
  4. receive and store the “carriage number” assigned by SENT
  5. centrally administrate notifications using the administrator’s console
  6. track message statuses
  7. archive XML messages
  8. report and search in the archive

SNP SENT Transfer

SNP SENT Transfer is a web application used to transfer and check the status of notifications sent to the SENT system and to inform other responsible entities (business partners).
SNP SENT Transfer allows you to:

  • download the data to be sent (SENT forms) from any IT system that sends data via the SOAP web-service interface (e.g. SAP ERP, SAP Business One, etc.), from SNP SENT Generator (running in the SAP system), among other applications;
  • send data to the SENT system (PUESC/SEAP platform) via the SOAP web-service interface;
  • in the event of failure of the PUESC/SEAP platform, it sends an email with forms (a requirement set out in the Act) to the email address of the PUESC/SEAP platform (puesc@mf.gov.pl);
  • check the status of notifications;
  • send email notifications to the offeree with reference numbers (keys);
  • additionally: to send SMS notifications to business partners of the offeree (carriers, receiving entities).