Overview of Online Sales Note Submission
Sales notes provide information about first sales fish to UK authorities. In order to submit a sales note electronically, the buyer must ensure that all of the required information is included, in a format that the UK authority website will recognise. All electronic sales notes must contain the buyer registration number, vessel details, landing details and purchase details. This makes up the header information for a sales note. An example of this is below.
Each combination of fish sold must be included with the quantity and value for that combination. This is known as a sales line and it comprises of species, fishing area, grade, state, presentation, size and currency. Each sales note can contain many sales lines.
The ERS website has been developed to allow buyers to complete sales notes online. It is easy to use and has a number of features to reduce the amount of data entry, including vessel lookup, and sales line validation.
This option would be suitable for someone with basic computer skills, who has a familiarity of websites.
Before you start
- Do you have Internet Explorer 6.0 or later?
- Are pop-ups enabled on Internet Explorer?
- Is your company registered on the ERS website?
How to complete a sales note online
Click on Create Buyer Sales Note
All compulsory fields are marked with a *.
Dropdown menu fields appear like this:
Click on the arrow to display the list and scroll through to find the option you need, or type in the first few letters to take you to the option.
Use the tab to move to the next field.
Type in Vessel PLN and click the blue box.
This completes the Vessel Details.
For the date fields (date of landing and date of purchase), click on the calendar icon on the right of the box to display a calendar. Select the appropriate day and the date will be entered in the correct format. Alternatively, type in the date in the format dd/mm/yyyy. If you use the wrong date format the following message will appear:
When all compulsory fields are completed, click on the Add button.
Type in the sales line details. Select details from each of the dropdown menus, type in the weight and value of the sales line.
Note that information available in each of the dropdown menus varies depending on the species selected, ensuring that only valid sale line combinations are allowed.
When all details for the sales line are entered, click on the Add Sales Line button.
When all sales lines are added to the sales note click on the Submit button.
A message appears to let you know the sales note has been submitted and provides a reference number.
Why a sales note fails validation
- Invalid vessel details
- Invalid logbook number
- Duplicate sales note
Amending a sales note
- How to amend a sales note
- If a sales note has been accepted by the ERS website it cannot be amended until it has been unlocked by a member of the UK Fisheries Authorities. Contact your local office and ask them to unlock the record. You will need to tell them the sales note reference number and the reason for the change.
- If a sales note fails validation, you can log on to the ERS website and amend it.
To modify or view a submitted sales note click on one of the three manage buttons.
- Note in preparation: Saved but not submitted forms.
- Submitted and Modified: Successfully submitted sales notes, cannot be amended until they have been unlocked by the authorities.
- Alerts: These are for sales notes that have failed validation.
The edit button is available in this case. Click on this to go to the sales note:
At the top of the sales note, the following fields will be available. Complete these, amend the sales note and click submit.
- Reasons that UK authorities would request a change
a) If a sales note fails validation, MMO staff will be in contact with you to discuss changes that are required.
b) If a sales note is accepted on the website, staff could notice that some data that could be a discrepancy. For example there could be an incorrect value for the species. They will discuss the issue with you and if a change is necessary they will reject the sales note for you to amend.
Advantages to using online submission
- Other submission options require a certain level of computer skills. Anyone who has used the internet for a while should have sufficient skills to use online submission.
- The process for completing online sales note submission is more straightforward than the other options.
- Buyer details are already completed.
- There is much less chance of a sales note failing validation. This is because:
- Invalid vessels will be flagged up while data entry is being done.
- Sales lines only allow valid combinations of data.
- Duplicate sales notes are flagged up to users when submit is clicked and they then have the choice whether to continue to submit the sale note.
- Sales notes can be printed to be used as invoices if required.
Disadvantages
- Speed of data entry, for example some of the dropdown menus are difficult to use as they contain many options (in particular the species and port of landing).
- For anyone with a slow internet connection, using the website can be frustrating.
- If the buyer already has their own data entry system, using this option will require them to enter the sales details twice.
- Other offline options offer more flexibility (extra fields can be added).