TRACES and EU declarations
What goes where?
VIA assembles origins, quantities, plot versions, image evidence and internal risk assessments. TRACES is the EU platform; its EUDR Information System receives due diligence statements, called DDS.
The connection links your VIA organisation to its EU access. It does not import the entire TRACES account. A responsible person reviews the draft and explicitly submits it.
| Data | VIA behaviour |
|---|---|
| Products, HS codes, quantities, producers, production countries and geometries | Assembled from the reviewed shipment into a DDS draft and sent to the EU upon submission. |
| Image evidence, original documents and review reports | Remain in VIA and the evidence dossier. This DDS workflow sends no image files or report PDFs. |
| EU status, reference number and verification number | Stored against the matching declaration after retrieval. An EU response does not establish deforestation-free production. |
1. Obtain EU access
Register the organisation and user in the EU system, or join an existing company. Acceptance is for testing without legal effect; Production is for legally effective declarations. Register separately for each environment.
Find web service details in the EU profile under Edit Profile → Web Services Access. Use the web service username, Authentication Key and WebServiceClientId. The key is not your EU Login password. An Operator Access Identifier selects the company context when needed. Follow the official credential instructions for the EU registration process.
2. Connect VIA
Open Settings → TRACES. Legal company details and EORI remain under Settings → Organisation.
- Select Acceptance.
- Enter the three required web service values and, if needed, the Operator Access Identifier.
- Choose Save. The key is encrypted and is not shown again.
- Choose Test saved connection. This checks connectivity and company context without submitting a DDS.
Managing credentials requires settings.manage. Other settings readers see disabled fields and an explanation. If secure storage is unavailable, saving remains disabled until technical administration configures it.
Acceptance and Production refer to the EU environment, independently of whether VIA is opened on staging or in production.
3. Prepare a shipment declaration
Open Dispatch → Shipments → Shipment → Review → EU declaration / TRACES.
- Complete production data, origins, evidence and the EUDR assessment. Establish the correct scope and legal role. This own-DDS workflow is for responsible operators or authorised representatives; not every supply-chain role submits its own DDS.
- Record a current internal Approved decision with no open review items. Disputed cases may require another approver.
- Select EU environment, activity and country of activity. Add species for wood and the represented company for representatives.
- Choose Prepare draft. This initially stores the draft in VIA; EU credentials are not yet needed.
- Review the exact draft. Evidence changes make an earlier draft outdated.
- Confirm and choose Submit reviewed draft. Submission additionally requires traces.submit and a tested connection for that environment.
Steps remain visible when prerequisites are missing. Messages explain disabled actions. Saving credentials does not enable production transmission: after a complete Acceptance exercise, technical administration enables it separately. The one-time simplified declaration for eligible small primary operators is a separate workflow that VIA does not yet automate.
4. How does the EU response return to VIA?
After submission, VIA retains the EU identifier. Wait at least 30 minutes, then choose Retrieve status / reconcile uncertain transmission. Status, reference and verification numbers are stored directly against the declaration and shipment; no portal copy-and-paste is needed. They are not automatically copied into a general free-text field.
For a timeout or uncertain result, reconcile the stored internal reference before any new submission. Amendment and withdrawal require separate confirmation and remain subject to EU lifecycle locks. VIA does not synchronise arbitrary external declarations in the background.
Record supplier-provided reference and verification numbers in the shipment’s upstream EU declarations and link them to their goods. An own declaration created manually in the EU portal can be documented in DDS reference; manual entry is not a verified API status and does not replace the controlled submission workflow.
Print image evidence
Under Image evidence for this plot → Retained evidence → Print image evidence, print stored crops with acquisition date, plot version, source and checksum. Screening reports include the same evidence for their own plot version. Later images are identified as evidence retained at print time and do not change the historical finding. Unsaved tile thumbnails are not included as evidence.