Nine times out of ten, refreshing your LinkedIn feed leads to another sales pitch by a consultant offering to get your business AEO approved, presenting AEO as the golden ticket when it comes to customs and the supply chain. The status is often portrayed as a strategic necessity, with pop-up consultants positioning it as far more than a certificate. Instead, they describe it as a living operating model that supports compliance discipline, audit readiness, and seamless customs clearance.
This view is not wrong. AEO does represent a standardised governance framework. It requires clear internal controls, documented procedures, a high level of accountability, and a culture of continuous compliance. For large businesses, particularly those whose procurement frameworks require their supply chain and intermediaries to hold AEO, this standard provides reassurance that they have chosen the right partner. AEO serves as a badge of institutional reliability and a signal to HMRC that they only use the best of the best.
Yet while AEO’s benefits are well publicised, do they directly alter what happens at the UK border? It is not a straightforward answer. Customs compliance and operational performance, while linked, are not the same, and nowhere is that difference more visible than in the interaction between customs requirements and the just-in-time supply chains of EU-GB movements.
Within this space, SCDP, or Simplified Customs Declaration Processes to give it its full title, provides immediate benefits that AEO alone does not and cannot deliver.
AEO supporters often highlight the potential for reduced inspection frequency and improved clearance consistency. Their argument is that AEO users are treated as lower-risk entities and therefore enjoy fewer delays. In principle, this is correct. In practice, however, border interventions are primarily driven by wider considerations such as commodity sensitivity, SPS rules, intelligence-led targeting, and random checks.
EORI is both AEO and SCDP approved. While we default to simplifications where possible, there are scenarios where they cannot be used and the importer opts to use their cash account. Since becoming AEO approved, the number of interventions by HMRC and the various border agencies has remained the same where simplifications are not used. What was flagged before is still flagged today. The only difference between pre- and post-AEO customs entries is the additional codes required to show this "gold standard".
AEO may influence risk scoring, but its benefits remain conditional. SCDP, by contrast, embeds predictability into the process itself.
With EIDR, goods are released immediately on arrival. With no formal declaration at the time of crossing the frontier, border agencies do not have anything to check. While it sounds too good to be true, SCDP (formerly CFSP) has existed in one way or another since 1998.
With an SFD, the frontier data requirements are minimal, reducing the administration required at the border. If the goods require an import licence such as a CHED, then naturally this will have to be endorsed by the relevant authorities, but that would be the same under AEO. Yet the simplified entry is cleaner, smaller, and more efficient to produce.
The initial presentation, whether a simplified declaration or EIDR release, must be supplemented with data that was not declared at the time, hence the name supplementary declaration. This shifts administration-heavy processes away from the border and into the back office. If it is not complete by five o’clock, there is always the next day or even the following week.
If you said to your Head of Logistics:
a) customs entries that might have a reduced check rate, or
b) no customs entries at the frontier and thus no checks either,
you would not have to think twice as to which they would choose.
Fortunately, AEO and SCDP are not mutually exclusive, yet only one is heavily promoted as the holy grail of customs approvals.
Taken together, AEO and SCDP should not be viewed as competing approvals, but as complementary tools with distinct applications. AEO strengthens overall compliance, industry trust, and credibility with HMRC. SCDP maximises operational efficiency, logistical performance, and reduced clearance costs.
The former is a nice badge to have; the latter is essential for ensuring goods move quickly and efficiently and is the most overlooked of them all.
Cash flow further reinforces this difference. AEO can support better financial planning by reducing guarantee amounts required for deferment accounts or transit guarantees, but it does not alter the underlying cash flow of businesses.
SCDP, however, directly changes it. By allowing deferred duty and VAT accounting and consolidating declarations into periodic cycles, SCDP improves working capital efficiency in a way that is both immediate and structural. For sectors characterised by high shipment frequency, time-sensitive perishables, or volatile cost bases, this distinction is particularly important.
It is equally necessary to recognise that AEO occupies a legitimate and sometimes essential place in the modern customs landscape. Multinational manufacturers, global logistics providers, and large corporates operating across multiple jurisdictions rely on AEO as a harmonised compliance passport. For them, AEO is often not optional and is touted as a requirement for participation in global supply chains and procurement systems.
SCDP, by contrast, is not designed to meet this global recognition role. It is a UK- and EU-focused operational simplification mechanism optimised for speed, fluidity, and efficiency at the border.
A modern UK customs strategy should make room for the pair working hand in hand. AEO is a valuable trust credential and an enabler of international integration. SCDP is a practical, performance-driven tool that delivers concrete benefits on the ground.
AEO shapes the compliance environment, while SCDP enables the supply chain to function to its full potential. Both matter, but in different ways.