Tips and Tricks for SAP TM and BN4L Integration

[CorinnaKramer]

Are you a net new SAP Transportation Management or SAP S/4HANA (SAP TM) customer and plan or consider utilizing logistics collaboration with SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration (SAP FC)?

Then this is for you! 

SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration supports collaborative logistics processes, designed to integrate seamlessly with the relevant SAP backend systems. For freight collaboration scenarios, it provides out-of-the-box connectivity to shippers with SAP Transportation Management (on-premise) or Transportation Management embedded in SAP S/4HANA (on-premise) or SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition.

Please refer to SAP Note 2620322 for further details. Depending on your specific release version, additional SAP Notes may be required, as outlined in the referenced document.

This article compiles practical tips and tricks to facilitate the integration of SAP TM and SAP FC as part of an implementation project, whether the integration is currently planned or under consideration for the future.

How do SAP Transportation Management / SAP S/4HANA and SAP FC integrate?

Integration of SAP TM and SAP FC will connect stakeholders across the logistics ecosystem for enhanced collaboration and advanced insights. The Business Network is a global, interoperable network supporting multi-modal transports. Onboarded once, you can collaborate with current and new carriers.  

To manage logistics operations, shippers connect via SOAP API (for a full list, please refer to the API hub).

Carriers generally have three options:

• Use Web portal applications
• Integrate via REST API
• Integrate through EDI 

  Figure 1: Example for end-to-end outbound collaboration

Which Processes are Supported?

SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration supports the following processes:

• Contracting (including road tendering) and external planning
• Dock appointment scheduling
• Execution reporting
• Settlement and dispute management

 Figure 2: API and EDI in SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration

Why are the Tips and Tricks Important?

SAP FC is seamlessly integrated with SAP TM and depends heavily on the data provided by TM. If the required information is not properly shared or maintained within the expected fields, the collaboration processes within SAP FC may not perform at their full potential.

Customers who deviate from the recommended best practices outlined below for their SAP TM configuration are likely to face increased implementation and maintenance efforts to support SAP FC. Furthermore, each carrier they work with will encounter additional complexity when integrating with SAP FC via API or EDI. This compounded effort not only increases overall operational demands but also makes onboarding carriers to the network significantly more challenging.

Please note, this following tips and tricks relate to the time of publishing of this article. Over time, there might be changes, so please always check SAP Note 3641633, where we will provide the latest version of the tips and tricks.

Tips and Tricks When Configuring Your SAP TM

General

1. Freight Order and Freight Booking

SAP TM supports two main objects:

• Freight Order for road and rail
• Freight Booking for ocean and air

The Freight Order is not designed for ocean and air (even though it can support those modes of transport to some extent).

Tip: When using SAP TM and SAP FC, we recommend you use Freight Bookings for your ocean and air transports as these have been built specifically for those modes of transport and contain important information for the same.

2. Code Lists

As a shipper, you can maintain mappings for SAP FC-defined code lists (such as packaging material type). When a business document is sent from SAP TM to SAP FC, the SAP FC system converts the code lists to SAP FC standard and displays the value on the UI of the corresponding app.

SAP FC supports mapping to the common definition of codes as listed here. Some code lists can be adapted in SAP FC as explained here.

   Figure 3: Overview of Code Lists that can be customized in SAP FC

For those code lists, you have the following possibilities to define code list mappings:

• Take over standard BN4L code lists and their values
• Upload a spreadsheet with your customized code list values
• Add values manually

Tip: Please check your codes are mapped in the "Assign Codes" app and note that SAP FC only supports one-to-one mapping of codes.

3. Business Partner Configuration 

When maintaining a freight order, you must maintain a purchasing organization to send the freight order to SAP FC for processing by a carrier. You need this assignment for other freight order-related processes, too such as dock appointment scheduling, in which you send data to the SAP FC network.

Tip: Make sure to work with ‘purchasing organizations’ in your TM processes, as the assignment to purchasing organization will be the basis for the allocation to the carrier.  In SAP TM, you can define purchasing organizations and assign business partners. When using SAP FC, the LBN ID needs to be maintained there. Each carrier you work with needs to be assigned to a purchasing organization.

4. Maintain Note Type for Reference Documents

In SAP FC, shippers can specify whether they want to send reference documents that are relevant in the settlement process to SAP TM as notes (e.g. custom documents, export permit, waybill, etc.). If the setting is enabled, shippers can also specify the note type for these reference documents. It will be used to send the reference documents as a note.

Tip: Use a note type that is different from the default note type as the system uses the default note type to send the carrier notes to your SAP TM system.

 Figure 4: Defining Reference Document Types to be send to SAP TM in SAP FC app 'General Settings'.

5. Attachment Schema

In SAP FC, shippers and carriers can exchange attachments, for example as part of the freight order freight booking confirmation. Shippers can share any attachment type and it will show on for the carriers in the respective application. When carriers share attachments, their default attachment type code is ATCMT.

Tip: The attachment type ATCMT can later be modified using inbound Badi to a desired attachment type in SAP TM.

Contracting and External Planning

 6. Contact Details

SAP FC supports confirmation of freight. Amongst other information such as freight ID or ordering party, the contact details can be shared.

Tip: If provided in SAP TM business partner type ‘Person’ (BP Category 1), the company name of the ordering party along with the phone number and the email address of the contact person can be shared.

 7. Outsourced Planning

SAP FC supports outsourcing the planning process, where the ordering party in Transportation Management (TM) on SAP S/4HANA can create freight units and outsource the planning of those freight units to a forwarder.

Tip: Maintain the ‘Forwarding Agent’ on the Sales Order header – ‘Partners’, to forward the receiver information into the freight unit so that the recipient of the freight unit can be determined.

 Figure 5: Maintain 'Forwarding Agent' in SAP TM to enable external planning via SAP FC

Tip: Maintain the Purchasing Organization on the freight unit, so that the freight unit replication can be triggered.

 Figure 6: Maintain the purchasing organization in the freight order

More details on External Planning API in SAP Business Network for Logistics can be found in SAP Community.

Execution and Reporting

 8. Location Object ID

The Location Object Type is part of the Location ID in the Consumer API for Order Tracking (see further down).

Tip: Align on the Location Object Type with your carriers if planning to get events reported with location ID.

9.Mandatory stopIDs

Carriers can choose to send stopIDs, locationID, or UNLOCODE/IATACode. If the carrier sends locationID or UNLOCODE/IATACode, SAP FC looks up the stopIDs and delegates it to SAP TM. Usually carriers prefer to use UNLOCODE/IATACode as this is an industry-standard code and they do not have to deal with shipper-specific codes.

Tip: Make sure to convey the requirement for stopIDs to your carriers, so they report locationID, UNLOCODE/IATACode or stopID along with an event.

10. Status of order in SAP TM

Events cannot be received properly if the status of the freight order / freight booking in SAP TM is not correct.

Tip: The status of your freight orders / freight bookings must be ‘Ready for Transportation Execution’ for carriers to successfully report events.

UNLESS, you enable the automatic derivation of ‘Ready for Transportation Execution’. This is triggered when either the first execution-relevant event is reported or the first stop's execution status in the freight document is updated. For more information, see ‘Define Event Profiles’ in SAP TM.

11. Supported modes of transport

Carriers are only able to report road and ocean events (modes 01 and 03) against SAP FC.

Tip: If you want your carriers to report on other modes of transport, please use SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace.

12. Document references

Document references cannot be sent along with an event via API.

Tip: If you need to receive document references while the order is in execution, carriers should send an update to confirmation and pass the document references along with it. That way it can be updated in SAP TM against the order.

Settlement and Dispute Management

13. Assign Charge Codes for Carrier Invoicing Scenario

The carrier generates the invoice in their transportation system and submits it via SAP FC. The charges in their transportation system invoice are represented by condition types. These condition types are mapped to specific charge types in your transportation system.

When you map the charge types and condition types to charge codes, in SAP FC, the carrier views the charge codes in the charges table in the freight order and the invoice documents.

These charge codes provide a uniform representation of the charge types across the entire network. Hence, you must map your charge types and condition types to charge codes in the Assign Charge Codes app.

 Figure 7: Assigning SAP FC charge codes in the 'Assign Charge Codes' app

Tip: When defining condition types and charge types for your SAP TM system, bear in mind, that you cannot assign multiple combinations of TM charge types and TM condition types to a single SAP FC charge code. If you cannot find a predefined code, you can create new custom charge codes – but remember, that your carriers need to be able to distinguish the charge codes.

14.Assign Tax Codes for the Carrier Invoicing Scenario

Taxes can also be charged by the carrier as part of an invoice. Carriers can choose from a list of predefined tax codes in SAP FC.

 Figure 8: Define tax codes and corresponding percentages for invoicing in SAP FC

Tip: Maintain the same tax codes as in SAP TM. That way the carrier will not have to make manual entries but can reuse the predefined tax codes.

 15. Assign Charge Codes for Self-Billing

In a self-billing scenario, you must map the charge types in the SAP TM to standard freight collaboration option to charge codes.

Tip: You could download the charge types from the charge type customizing from SAP TM and upload the same in the freight collaboration option in this app. Please note that the first row is ignored by the system during upload. Similarly, only the first column is read by the app.

When you choose carrier and self billing (scenario ‘Both’) in the ‘Assign Charge Codes’ app, you need to find a common mapping.

16. Invoice Status Update

For better visibility of the entire invoice integration scenario, there is an optional SAP note that helps the carrier know when the invoice got created in the shipper’s system, when it is being processed or when the invoice gets rejected.

Tip: Implement SAP Note 3557909.

Dock Appointment Scheduling

 17. Manage Locations

You can set up a location replication using the Data Replication Framework (DRF) and import locations from SAP TM. Alternatively, you can create locations manually.

Tip: When you plan to replicate, define your locations in a way that are meaningful for dock appointment scheduling. The location ID will be used to determine the corresponding docking location. For each docking location, you can define multiple loading points (i.e. going one level deeper in granularity, but not automatically determined by location ID).

18. Preferred Slots

If the shipper provides the acceptable and requested date and time information, it will be displayed when you maintain an appointment. The requested dates correspond to the ‘Loading of Cargo Start Date/Time’ and ‘Loading of Cargo End Date/Time’ fields of the respective stop in SAP TM. The acceptable dates correspond to the ‘Start Date/Time Confirmed by Carrier’ and ‘End Date/Time Confirmed by Carrier’ fields.

Tip: Make sure to use these fields if you want to use preferred slots in dock appointment scheduling.

19. APIs for Dock Appointment Scheduling

There are 5 APIs relevant for dock appointment scheduling:

• Provider API for Dock Appointment Scheduling
• Provider API for Dock Appointment Cancellation
• Consumer API for Dock Appointment Scheduling
• Consumer API to Manage Gate Operations
• Provider API to Manage Gate Operations

All of the above APIs need to be implemented by shippers themselves.

Tip: The guest user scenario where business partners are not maintained in SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration only works via API.

Again, please note, this article describes the tips and tricks at time of publishing. Over time, there might be changes, so please always check SAP Note 3641633, where we will provide the latest version of the tips and tricks.