Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services

Sales  
 
Sales measures gross operating revenues less rebates, discounts and returns.  Sales 
should be measured exclusive of consumption and sales taxes on consumers, as 
well as value added taxes. 
Services 
In the 1993 SNA, Services are defined as outputs produced to order and which 
cannot be traded separately from their production; ownership rights cannot be 
established over services and by the time their production is completed they must 
have been provided to the consumers; however, as an exception to this rule there is 
a group of industries, generally classified as service industries, some of whose 
outputs have characteristics of goods, i.e., those concerned with the provision, 
storage, communication and dissemination of information, advice and 
entertainment in the broadest sense of those terms; the products of these industries, 
where ownership rights can be established, may be classified either as goods or 
services, depending on the medium by which these outputs are supplied.  
In practice, service industries (or activities) are taken to be those in sections G to 
Q, inclusive, of ISIC, Rev 3. 
In BPM5, the concept of services is, in principle, essentially that of the 1993 SNA 
but for practical measurement reasons international trade in services includes some 
trade in goods between residents and non-residents, such as those bought by 
travellers and similarly goods purchased by embassies. On the other hand, 
payments for international trade in goods may under certain circumstances 
indistinguishably include service charges, such as insurance, maintenance 
contracts, transport charges, royalty payments, packaging and software.