The Farmers' Union of Wales today warned farmers to check their Single Application Form (SAF) statements for errors and contact the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) if they have any concerns as soon as possible.
The warning comes on the May 31 deadline after which hefty penalties are incurred for corrections or late forms, and ten days before late forms and corrections are automatically rejected.
Speaking at the Urdd National Eisteddfod, FUW president Gareth Vaughan said: "This year's Positional Accuracy Improvement process has added significantly to the complexity of filling in SAF forms, adding to the risk of errors being made on forms.
"Every year the FUW deals with penalties applied to members' Single Payments due to errors made on SAF forms and these can and do lead to people loosing their entire annual income."
Mr Vaughan added that in previous years the FUW had also encountered a significant number of scanning errors made by the WAG which could have significantly delayed payments.
"It is, therefore, essential that people take the time to check their SAF statements for accuracy. A good place to start is by looking at the amount of total forage area declared which can often alert you to obvious problems.
"If you haven't received any kind of acknowledgement that WAG has received your IACS form, then you should contact WAG as soon as possible in case the form has somehow been lost."
Under EC rules, any SAF forms received between May 17 and June 10 2011 will incur financial penalties, after which the forms are completely rejected.
From May 31 to June 10 amendments to add field parcels, change the use of land parcels, or changes to the claims made on land parcels will lead to a late submission penalty of 1% per working day. No amendments are accepted after June 10 2011.
If farmers have already been notified of an error on their SAF, or have been notified of an inspection which subsequently reveals errors, it is not possible to rectify the error or amend details of the parcels of land concerned.