Getting started with EPR Compliance

Getting started with EPR Compliance

Getting started

About an hour, most of it waiting for you to find packaging weights.

1. Say who is responsible

Settings → EPR Compliance → Responsible. Deadline reminders are raised as Odoo activities against this person. Compliance work with no name against it does not get done.

2. Run the obligation radar

EPR → Obligation Radar → New → Run Assessment.

It reads the last twelve months of completed outgoing shipments, works out which countries and US states you sent goods to, matches those against the regimes in force, and tells you where you stand. You will get one line per market with a verdict:

VerdictMeaning
Needs actionYou are shipping there and are not registered, or your registration has lapsed
Worth watchingYou are shipping there but appear to be under the threshold
CoveredRegistered, keep filing

Start with the red ones. Registration is generally required before the first shipment, so an unregistered market is not a paperwork backlog - it is an exposure.

3. Record your registrations

EPR → Registrations. One per market, with the number the regulator issued. If you are already registered somewhere, put the number in now: the radar uses these to tell covered markets from uncovered ones, and some of these numbers legally belong on your invoices.

4. Describe your packaging

EPR → Packaging → Specifications.

A specification is the packaging one product ships in - the bottle, its cap, its label, the carton, the tape. Weigh each part once and share the specification across every product that uses it.

Then set EPR Packaging on each product (the EPR tab on the product form). The dashboard tracks how many products still have none.

5. Compute your first declaration

EPR → Declarations → New. Pick the market, the period and whether the scheme charges household packaging only (the UK) or everything (most others), then press Compute.

Read the confidence rating before you read the tonnage. If it says a percentage of units had no packaging data, the tonnage is understated by about that much and the gaps tab lists exactly which products to fix.

6. Check the calendar

EPR → Deadlines. Populated for markets you are registered in or that the radar found you shipping to. Reminders arrive 90 days ahead for a registration, 45 for a report.