💡 Products are the basic building blocks in Douano. Each product is created based on a specific product type, which is essential for the correct calculation of excise duties.
💡 You can use products in two ways:
Individually: for example, for raw materials, services, or simple sales products.
As part of a composition: by combining several products into one composite or finished product. For example, a bottled beverage requires at least two products: the beverage itself and the beverage packaging.
💡 By correctly combining products in Douano, the system can automatically apply the correct excise duties in orders, invoices, excise declarations, and more.
⚠️ 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.
When should you use a composite or finished product?
Composite Product
💡 Use this product type when you produce and bottle products yourself.
To create a composite product in Douano, you first need to create all the individual components. Each of these components must be set up with the correct product type. You can then combine them into a composite product. Typical components included in a composite product are:
the beverage (e.g. beer, wine…),
the beverage packaging/container (e.g. glass bottle, can…),
and additional parts (e.g. caps, crown corks, labels…).
When executing a bottling order, Douano will:
automatically deduct all components from stock, and
add the finished product to your inventory.
💡 This ensures both accurate stock management and correct excise calculations.
Finished Product
💡 Use this product type when you purchase and sell products without producing them yourself.
Unlike a composite product, you do not need to create the separate components in advance. You simply enter the parameters for both the beverage and the packaging/container directly into the finished product.
Douano will automatically create the corresponding components in the background.
In a finished product, you only combine:
the beverage
and the beverage packaging/container
This allows Douano to correctly calculate excise duties during sales or declarations.
💡 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.
Beverages
💡 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.
Beer
💡 The excise value of beer is determined by the alcohol percentage in combination with the brewery size. Therefore, you must create a separate product for each type of beer.
Alcohol percentage: the exact alcohol content of the finished, bottled beer.
Degrees Plato: the exact number of °Plato of the finished, bottled beer.
Brewery size: excise duties are by default calculated using the rates for a production volume of more than 200,000 hl. Under certain conditions, reduced rates apply — specifically if the beer is brewed by a small independent brewery in an EU member state. Be sure to select the correct annual production volume.
☝️ Are you outsourcing your brewing to an external brewery? In that case, you must always select the production volume “more than 200,000 hl” for this beer.
Spirits
💡 The excise value of spirits is determined by the alcohol percentage. Therefore, you need to create a separate product for each type of spirit.
Alcohol percentage: the exact alcohol content of the finished spirit.
Wine and Sparkling Wine
💡 The excise value of wine and sparkling wine is determined based on the alcohol percentage. There is a distinction between two categories:
Wine/sparkling wine with an alcohol percentage below 8.5% vol
Wine/sparkling wine with an alcohol percentage above 8.5% vol
For a correct excise calculation in Douano, it is therefore sufficient to create two separate products:
Wine/Sparkling Wine <8.5%
Wine/Sparkling Wine >8.5%
You can then reuse these products in multiple compositions, where you define the specific name or description of the wine in the composition itself.
Alcohol percentage: the exact alcohol content of the wine.
☝️ The following two fields are optional unless you are working with the EMCS integration:
Wine category: select the category this wine belongs to.
Country of origin: select the country from which the wine originates. You can only select countries that have already been created in Douano. Follow this 👉 guide to add a new country.
Intermediate Product
💡 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.
Sparkling: sparkling intermediate products are subject to different excise rates and require different excise registrations compared to non-sparkling ones.
Alcohol percentage: the exact alcohol content of the finished intermediate product.
Soft Drink
💡 Beverages based on water, mineral water, or sparkling water with added sugar or other sweeteners should be created in Douano using the Soft Drink product type.
💡 Alcohol-free beer and alcohol-free wine also fall under this category and should be created as soft drinks.
Fruit Juice
💡 Unfermented fruit and vegetable juices, without added alcohol, should be created using the Fruit Juice product type in Douano. This includes both juices with and without added sugars or sweeteners.
Beverage Packaging / Container
💡 Beverage packaging refers to empty cans, bottles, kegs/barrels, bags... that will eventually contain a beverage such as beer, spirits, soft drinks...
Capacity: the actual capacity of this beverage container.
Capacity unit: the unit in which the capacity is expressed. Typically, this is in litres.
Simple Product
💡 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 Material
💡 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...
Unit: the unit in which you want to manage the stock of this raw material. This unit will be used when the raw material is added to a recipe in the Production module. For this reason, it's recommended to track raw materials in units like litres or kilograms, even if you purchase them in bags or boxes.
Raw material group: if this product is a raw material that should appear in the Raw Materials Stock Sheet within the Customs module, you can use this field to define under which group this raw material should be listed. All raw materials assigned to the same group will be consolidated under that group name.
Transport Unit
💡 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.
Capacity or Load Limit: the maximum weight that may be stacked on this transport unit.
Service
💡 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.