International fairs are where programmes are made — and where a gallery's finance function earns its keep. Every fair abroad is a temporary export business: goods crossing borders, sales in foreign jurisdictions, and a cash cycle that starts paying out six months before a single red dot.

The goods: temporary admission is your friend

Works travelling to an overseas fair should normally move under temporary admission (or an ATA carnet, or the fair's own bonded arrangements), suspending import duty and VAT while the works are there for exhibition. Sold works are then formally imported by (or for) the buyer, with local import VAT arising at that point — often at a favourable rate for art. Unsold works return home under the same relief. The discipline is documentary: what left, under what procedure, what sold, what returned, all reconciled. Works that slip outside the procedure become chargeable imports, and the assessments arrive long after the fair.

The sales: where, and by whom

A sale agreed at a fair raises the question of where the supply happens and whose VAT applies — which can depend on where the work is at the time, where it's delivered, and whether you sell as owner or as agent for the artist. Shipping a sold work directly from the fair to a buyer in a third country is a different transaction from bringing it back to London and exporting it. None of this is exotic, but each fair jurisdiction has its own registration thresholds and paperwork, and the fair organisers' guidance is a starting point, not advice.

The cash: the real killer

Stand costs, shipping, insurance, framing, travel and build are paid across the months before the fair; collector payments often land across the months after it. A gallery doing three fairs a year can have two fairs' worth of costs permanently in the working capital cycle. A per-fair budget and cashflow — costs committed, deposits due, break-even in sales — turns the annual fair calendar from an act of faith into a plan. It also answers the strategic question honestly: after full costs, which fairs actually make money?

Your Practice team can build the per-fair P&L and the customs reconciliation as standard templates — set up once, reused every fair.