As a result of the Windsor Framework customers must provide additional data to continue to send goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland from 31 March 2025.
From 31 March 2025 the additional data will become mandatory and must be provided in order to continue to send goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
For more information on the Windsor Framework, please see these webpages for more details:
Royal Mail:
https://www.royalmail.com/windsor-framework
UK Government Guidance:
Setup Guide
If you post to Northern Ireland from Great Britain, there is some information your need to provide.
Click & Drop will prompt admin users to provide the required information the first time you process a shipment to Northern Ireland from Great Britain. If you are not an admin user, you will be prompted to notify your admin user to complete the necessary configuration.
These are one time settings, and once you have set these, you will not need to change them again.
- If you do not have a Royal Mail Online Business Account and pay for your labels via card or PayPal: Go to your account settings and specify if you are a business or not. If you are not a business, the Windsor framework does not apply to your shipments. No further configuration is necessary.
- Go to Settings / Trading Names and specify your EORI number in the EORI field. Note, you must provide an EORI number to ship to Businesses in Northern Ireland.
- Remaining in Settings / Trading Names, from the Preregistration Tax Scheme field select United Kingdom.
- It is not mandatory for you to provide your UKIMS number. However, for GB to NI transactions valued over £135 either Sender or Recipient UKIMS is required; where a sender UKIMS is provided no recipient EORI/UKIMS is necessary, though it is recommended to provide these where available.
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For users who never ship to businesses, you can specify this in your account settings (shown in screenshot below), which sets ‘Recipient Is A Business’ to ‘No’ by default. However, you can still change this setting manually if needed.
Further Steps for CSV / Sheet Import and Click & Drop Desktop Users:
You will need to update your order import mappings to support the new Recipient Is A Business field, as this is mandatory data for shipments to Northern Ireland. Please note, you will still be able to import orders without specifying if the recipient (in Northern Ireland) is a business, but you will not be able to apply postage to those orders until you do.
Note: You can indicate that the recipient is a business by entering True, T, Yes, Y, or 1. If this field is left blank but mapped, it will be assumed as False, F, No, N, or 0 by default.
If you wish to provide a UKIMS number for the recipient, please ensure the AIRN field is mapped; you should provide the recipient's UKIMS numbers in the AIRN field.
If you wish to provide an EORI number for the recipient, please ensure the Recipient EORI field is mapped.
Detailed Guide
If you do not have a Royal Mail Online Business Account and have specified, as per the quick guide above, that you are not a business, the Windsor Framework requirements do not apply to you and there is no further configuration required. You will not be required to provide extended customs data (EORI or UKIMS numbers) for shipments to businesses in Northern Ireland.
When shipping from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, you will be required to specify if the recipient is a business. In the case the recipient is a business, you will need to provide additional customs data. The Windsor framework requires you to provide the same level of customs data that you would normally provide for shipments to businesses in the European Trading Zone and a combination of Sender and Recipient EORI and UKIMS numbers.
If you have both an EORI number and a UKIMS number configured on your account, recipient EORI and UKIMS are optional, though are recommended as the preferred identifiers for the recipient. If you have not provided a UKIMS number, the recipients EORI number is mandatory for shipments to Northern Ireland. The recipient's UKIMS remains optional, though it is recommended you provide this where possible.
As a business shipping to businesses in Northern Ireland, you must have a valid EORI number saved in your Click & Drop account; you can specify a different EORI number for each trading name if you wish. Please visit Settings / Trading names and select the trading name you wish to apply your EORI number to:
Adding your Trading Name UKIMS number:
Creating & Processing Orders from Great Britain to Northern Ireland
Click & Drop allows you to specify Windsor Framework information for your order whilst creating it, in the Click & Drop platform, importing a spreadsheet or over the C&D API.
Order Import Mappings:
Manually Creating Orders
When creating an order using the Click & Drop platform, you will be given the opportunity to provide the recipients EORI or UKIMS as shown in the screenshot below. In case you do not have this information to hand at the time of creating the order, you can still create the order and add the recipients EORI or UKIMS when applying postage.
Applying Postage
If, whilst importing or creating your order you did not specify if the recipient is a business, you will be required to do so before applying postage to your order:
Further, you can specify the recipients EORI and UKIMS numbers. Click & Drop will prompt you for the minimum required data for the order.
Recipient EORI & Recipient UKIMS
Missing Sender Data
Whilst applying postage to a shipment from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, if you are missing any required data, such as your EORI or UKIMS number, you will be prompted to provide this before being able to apply postage. We encourage Click & Drop account holders to provide both their EORI and UKIMS in advance where available as this will ensure the fewest number of manual interventions necessary when processing orders.
Note: if you are not an administrator user on the Click & Drop account, you will be prevented from applying postage until an account administrator can log in and provide the required data.
Click & Drop API Users
User of the click and drop public API are advised to review the API documentation for detailed data-contract requirements.
Windsor Framework configuration can only be completed in the Click & Drop platform, please ensure you have configured your account before attempting to create or otherwise process orders from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.