Businessmen or other persons liable to pay had to declare their goods in the excise office at the market in Bremen and, after paying the excise duty and making an entry in the account book, received an excise slip, which they had to show at the city gates in order to be allowed to export their goods. The amount of the excise duty was set out in the excise regulations for individual goods, separately for export and transit. The merchants' excise books in the Bremen State Archives are rightly regarded as important sources for Bremen's trading history, but they are also a rich source of personal history. They are preserved for the years 1539 - 1699, albeit with large gaps (especially before 1632), but can hardly be used for research without an index.

An exception is the year 1617, which was also fully recorded in the database - moreover, a year with relatively high excise income. The data was recorded by MAUS member Walter Putze and scientifically analyzed by Adolf E. Hofmeister (Bremen State Archives). The excise entries can be searched for the names of the merchants, whereby different names of obviously identical persons were standardized to normal names. In addition, a list of the classes and descriptions of goods is available. The excise register from 1617 is therefore an interesting source for family history research.