💡 Products are the foundational components in Douano. Each product is created based on a specific product type, which is essential for accurate calculation of excise duties and eco taxes.

💡 You can use products in two ways:

💡 By correctly combining products in Douano, the system can automatically apply the correct excise duties and eco taxes in orders, invoices, and AC4 declarations.

⚠️ Please note! Once a product has been created, the product type can no longer be changed. For beverages, specific data must be completed to ensure proper excise registration. So make sure to select the correct product type right from the start.

💡 Use this product type when you produce and bottle products yourself.

💡 This ensures both accurate stock management and correct excise calculations.

💡 Use this product type when you purchase and sell products without producing them yourself.

💡 You can also include finished products in a composite product - for example, to create a packaging unit like a box of 12 bottles or a crate of 24 cans.

💡 Many fields in a product record are shared across all product types. Therefore, this guide only covers the specific fields for each beverage product type.

💡 The general fields (such as name, category, unit, status, etc.) are explained in detail in this 👉 guide for creating a product.

💡 The excise value of beer is determined by the number of degrees Plato in combination with the size of the brewery. That’s why you need to create a separate product for each type of beer.

☝️ Is your beer brewed by an external brewery? Then you must select the more than 200,000 hl category for that beer.

💡 Beer is considered non-alcoholic when it has an alcohol volume of 0.5% or less. Beers at or below this threshold should be created as a Non-alcoholic Beer in Douano, and it's not required to define alcohol percentage, °Plato, or brewery size.

☝️ Once the alcohol content exceeds 0.5%, it is classified as alcoholic beer. In that case, you must create the product in Douano using the Beer product type.

💡 The excise value of spirits is determined by the alcohol percentage. Therefore, you need to create a separate product for each type of spirit.

💡 In Belgium, the excise value of wine and sparkling wine is determined based on the alcohol percentage. There is a distinction between two categories:

For a correct excise calculation in Douano, it is therefore sufficient to create two separate products:

You can then reuse these products in multiple compositions, where you define the specific name or description of the wine in the composition itself.

☝️ The following two fields are optional unless you are working with the EMCS integration:

💡 Wine is considered non-alcoholic when it contains a maximum alcohol volume of 1.2%. Wines at or below this threshold should be created as a Non-Alcoholic Wine in Douano, and it's not required to define the alcohol percentage.

☝️ Once the alcohol content exceeds 1.2%, it is classified as alcoholic wine. In that case, you must create the product in Douano using the product type Wine or Sparkling Wine.

💡 An Intermediate Product is an alcoholic beverage to which additional alcohol has been added on top of the alcohol produced through natural fermentation. Typical examples include port, sherry, and vermouth.

💡 Beverages based on water, mineral water, or carbonated water with added sugar or other sweeteners should be created in Douano using the Soft Drink product type.

💡 Non-fermented fruit and vegetable juices without added alcohol should be created in Douano using the Fruit Juice product type. This applies to juices both with or without added sugars or sweeteners.

💡 Syrups are non-alcoholic products used as flavorings, mixers, or as a base for soft drinks.

💡 Flavoured water is water that has been infused with natural or artificial aromas, such as fruit extracts, herbs, or other flavourings, and contains no sugar or alcohol.

💡 A sparkling fermented beverage is a lightly alcoholic drink that contains carbon dioxide, with the alcohol content resulting from fermentation. These drinks are often characterized by their fizzy nature, similar to sparkling wine, but are not necessarily made from grapes.

💡 A still fermented beverage is a lightly alcoholic drink created through fermentation that contains no carbonation. Unlike sparkling fermented beverages, these are completely still.

💡 Drink packaging refers to empty cans, bottles, kegs/barrels, bags... that will eventually contain a beverage such as beer, spirits, soft drinks...

💡 In Belgium, a distinction is made between drink packaging with or without environmental levies. Glass bottles, PET bottles, cans... are packaging types subject to an eco tax and should therefore be created using the product type drink packaging/container with environmental levy.

💡 Simple products are components, often consisting of a single part, that will eventually be part of a composed product. Examples include: bottle caps, labels, crates, boxes...

💡 Simple products are also used by default to create items that don’t fall under any other product type, such as glasses, books, etc.

💡 Raw materials form the foundation of your production processes in Douano. These are typically purchased to be processed into a finished product such as beer, wine, gin, fruit juice...

💡 A transport unit (also called transport carrier) is typically used for creating pallets.

💡 These transport units can be added to orders. In the logistics step of an order, you can assign products to one or more transport units. This information will then be shown on the delivery note or logistic label.

💡 Products such as guided tours, training sessions, discounts, etc. should be created as a Service. A service is a non-stockable product but can be included in sales orders. This allows you to generate reports in the reporting module - for example, to see what revenue was generated from training sessions.