The general list is a full list of all the equipment you are planning to temporarily export out of the UK and into another country. It must be detailed and comprehensive, as it is customs’ main reference when they are checking your goods.

Everything that you list on your ATA Carnet must return to the UK in the same state it left in. Therefore, all consumable or disposable items (such as pens, paper, glue, lightbulbs, disposable batteries, etc.) must be excluded from the general list and declared to customs separately.

The general list is comprised of seven main categories:

1. Item description:

This is where you need to list all key information about your item and clearly specify what it is. You need to provide enough detail so that customs will be able to easily identify your item when they are checking your Carnet. Terminology such as “Box of”, “Box containing”, “Assorted”, “Various”, “Accessories” and liberal use of the phrase “set of” (other than for cables) cannot be used as part of the description of goods, as they do not clarify what is actually being taken. 

2. Pieces:

This is where you need to list the quantity of each item. You should only list more than one piece if the items in the item description are identical.

3. Unit:

Enter the unit of weight such as ‘KG’ for kilograms or ‘G’ for grams. You should use the same unit of weight for each line item.

4. Weight:

This is where you need to list the weight of the item. You can do this one of two ways:

• List each individual item weight 
• List the total weight (the sum of all item weights) in the ‘totals’ field within the application on SGS

5. Value:

This is where you need to list the value of each item in GBP, and this should be the true commercial value of the item in the UK. The value must also reflect the price of the total number of items on that line.  

6. Origin:

This is where you need to input the origin of the item (the country of manufacture of the item) using the ISO two-letter (Alpha-2) country code system. You can find the full list of ISO country codes here.If completing the general list directly on SGS as part of the application, rather than completing the excel CSV, you can select the origin country via drop-down menu. 

7. Heading:

This column denotes a ‘heading’ however, the use of headings on the general list is being removed in the near future therefore, please leave this column blank.

An example general list looks like this: