By the end of this guide you will have filed one accurate EPR report and a repeatable way to do it every period after. It is written for the person who has already registered as a producer and now has to declare what their company put on the market.
EPR reporting is set at EU level but run country by country, so you file separately in each market you sell into, and every number has to match what you actually placed on that market.
What to gather before you file your report
Reporting is only as good as the data behind it, so three things need to be in place before you open a single portal.
- The list of markets and streams you report in. One line for each country and waste stream you are registered for.
- Your placed-on-market data for the period. The quantity of each product and its packaging that you actually sold into each country, by weight and material.
- Your scheme and registration details for each market. The membership or producer numbers each portal asks for.
If that product data is scattered across spreadsheets and suppliers, pulling it into one clean list is the slow part. Start there. Everything after it is arithmetic.
How EPR reporting actually works
Underneath the country-by-country detail, every EPR report is the same shape. You take what you placed on the market, sort it into the categories your scheme uses, file the totals in each market, and pay the bill that comes back.
Do it carefully once and each later period is a repeat with fresh numbers. The six steps below walk through that cycle in order.
The steps to file an EPR report
Work through them for one market first, then reuse the same routine for the rest.
1. Confirm what you report and when
First, pin down the scope of this filing. The deadlines and the categories are set by each market, not by you.
List every market and stream you are registered for, then find the reporting period and deadline for each one.
Most schemes report on a calendar year and want the figures early the next year, but some ask for quarterly data, and the dates move country by country. Packaging, electronics and batteries often report to different bodies even within one country, so treat each stream as its own filing.
The output is a short table with each market and stream on one side and its reporting period and deadline on the other.
2. Gather what you placed on the market
The heart of a report is one figure per material: how much you placed on each national market in the period.
Placed on the market means what you first sold or supplied into a country during the period. Not what you manufactured, and not what is still in a warehouse.
Pull the volumes from your sales or accounting records, and the make-up of each unit from your product specifications. Gather it per country, because the same product sold into three markets is three separate lines.
3. Break the totals down by material
Schemes do not bill you for a box. They bill you for grams of each material.
Split each product's packaging into the materials the scheme recognises: paper and board, glass, plastic, aluminium, steel, wood. Multiply each material's weight by the units you placed on the market, and you have your weight per material. That is why it is often called tonnage reporting.
The catch is that category lists differ by country, so the same bottle can land in one category in France and another in Germany. Map to each market's list, not a generic one.
4. Reconcile the numbers so they match reality
Before anything is filed, the totals have to line up with what your company actually sold. This is the step that keeps you out of trouble in an audit.
Start from gross sales, then take out what does not belong: units exported back out of the country, packaging that never reached the market, and anything reported by someone else in the chain. What is left is your placed-on-market figure.
Cross-check it against last period's report, because a total that jumps for no reason is what an auditor asks about. Some countries also require the data to be independently checked above a volume threshold. Germany, for example, asks larger producers for an audited completeness declaration.
The figure only holds up if it reconciles to your own sales records, with the working saved.
5. File in each market
Now the numbers go in. Filing usually happens in two places per market, and missing one can make a report count as incomplete.
In most countries you submit your volumes to your producer responsibility organisation, the scheme that handles collection and recycling for you. Many countries also want the same figures declared to a national register or authority.
Germany is the clear example. Packaging volumes go to your dual system and into LUCID at the Zentrale Stelle, while France routes reporting through its accredited eco-organisations. This hand-off of figures is sometimes called data submission.
Save the confirmation or reference number from each filing as proof it went in.
6. Pay the fees and keep your evidence
The report creates the bill, so paying and record-keeping close the loop. This is also what a future audit inspects.
Your fees are calculated straight from the weights you reported, and under EU rules they are increasingly eco-modulated, so easy-to-recycle packaging is billed less than hard-to-recycle packaging. Pay each invoice by its due date to keep the registration active.
Then keep everything behind the report: the raw data, the category mapping, the reconciliation, and the submission confirmations. Registers can ask you to prove a past figure years later, so the period is only closed once the fees are paid and that evidence is filed where you can find it again.
How Repax turns reporting into data work
Read back over those six steps and notice where the time goes. Almost none of it is the filing itself. It is gathering data, splitting it by material, mapping it to each country's categories, and doing it again next period. That is the work Repax is built to remove.
- Repax Core does the data half. Spec each product once, its materials, weights and components, and Core turns that into whatever breakdown a scheme asks for, in each market's categories. Steps 2 and 3 stop being a manual spreadsheet.
- Repax Comply is for the filing half. Submitting across markets and tracking each deadline, so step 5 is not a separate login per country. It is on the way, with a waitlist open.
- One product library, every market. The data is specced once and mapped per country, so the same product is not re-counted by hand for each report. Multi-country reporting becomes a repeat, not a rebuild.
Repax does not make you compliant on its own. It does the data and filing work that otherwise eats your calendar, and leaves the sign-off with you.
Pricing is public (as of July 2026):
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Free | €0 a month |
| Paid | From €29 a month |
| Custom | For high volume |
If you are still choosing a tool, our best EPR software rundown compares the main options, Repax included.
The one number everyone gets wrong
When a report goes wrong, it is almost always the quantity, not the paperwork. The rule is placed on the market, and it is commonly misstated in three ways.
- Reporting what you made or bought in, rather than what you actually sold into that country.
- Reporting gross weight, the product plus its packaging, when the scheme only wants the packaging.
- Forgetting to deduct what you exported back out, so you pay fees on goods that left the market.
Get that one figure right, per material and per country, and the rest of the report is procedure. Get it wrong and you either overpay for years or fail the reconciliation in step 4.
When you are unsure whether something counts, use the plain test: did you first supply it to a user in that country during the period?
Common questions about EPR reporting
Short, self-contained answers to the questions producers ask most about reporting.
How long does EPR reporting take?
Once your product data is clean, a single market is often an afternoon. The time goes into the data rather than the filing, mainly gathering placed-on-market figures and mapping them to each scheme's categories. The first report in a new market takes longest, and later ones reuse most of the work.
How often do I have to report?
It depends on the market. Most schemes report once a year on a calendar-year basis, but some ask for quarterly or monthly data. Check the deadline for each market and stream you are registered in, and treat each as its own filing. The country overview shows where to look.
Do I report to the government or to a scheme?
Usually both. In most countries you submit your volumes to your producer responsibility organisation, and many countries also require the same figures declared to a national register or authority. Germany is the clearest example, with data going to both a dual system and LUCID.
What happens if I report the wrong numbers?
Under-report, and an audit can bring back-payment of fees, corrections and penalties. Over-report, and you quietly overpay, sometimes for years. Either way the fix is step 4: tie your reported totals to your own sales records, so the figure you file is the figure you can defend.
Can Repax do my EPR reporting for me?
Core does the data work behind a report, and Comply, on the way, handles filing across markets. It removes the manual data and submission work, but responsibility for the report stays with you. Treat it as the tool that does the heavy lifting, not a replacement for signing off.
