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AtulGokhale
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
538

Global Trade is a very vast topic. With this SAP blog post I want to narrow down and focuses on very specific use case which is of a Shipper using SAP Transportation Management system to ship goods internationally. Shipper may use foreign-trade compliant SAP Global Trade Services (SAP GTS) solution or any other non-SAP solution.

Standard product documentation:

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_GLOBAL_TRADE_SERVICES_EDITION_HANA/3e27235faf0442d380b529b89bb82982/4a...

Compliance Management Control: Compliance Management helps ensure your compliance with international trade regulations. Compliance Management helps you rationalize your extended logistics chain and automate the complicated processes that are involved with international trade compliance issues, a primary prerequisite for successful international trading activities. This minimizes the risk of having to pay penalties and fines. 

  1. Sanction Party List Screening check: Sanctioned Party involved in the Transportation (Shipper, Consignee, Carrier etc.). A sanctioned party list contains a list of persons and companies with whom trade is prohibited by law. Sanctioned party lists are issued by government agencies and can be obtained from data providers. Sanctioned party lists are binding for all traders. During sanctioned party list screening, you compare your business partner addresses with the addresses on the relevant sanctioned party lists. When you export goods, for example, you can automatically compare the consignees' addresses with the sanctioned party list.
  2. Legal Control check: Legal control includes checking business transactions for products that require licenses, as well as the check for embargo situations for these business transactions.
    • Managing Licenses: The authorities define bans and restrictions for individual products or product groups to control their import and/or export. To import and export these products despite such restrictions, you can apply for licenses from the authorities. These licenses restrict goods traffic, for example, through quantity quotas or maximum values for goods. The authorities define license requirements for products based on import/export control classification numbers, with which you classify your products. Based on this classification, the system can detect which document items in a business transaction require licenses.
    • Embargo Checks: The government agencies of a country, group of countries, or international organizations as representatives of the United Nations sometimes impose bans on shipping specific products to specific countries, for business or political reasons, known as embargos. You have to comply with these embargos in your import and export processes.

Customs Management Control: The system helps your company automate and standardize import and export processes with the customs authorities. This enables you to use the import and export of goods faster and reduce the total costs for handling customs-relevant transactions. One essential prerequisite for this is electronic communication with the customs authorities in the individual countries that use computerized procedures. Electronic customs processing with the application helps companies meet the stringent requirements of the legal regulations, accelerating the release of their goods by the customs authorities.

Relevant information like shipment route, packaged cargo details, involved countries, Customs Invoice etc. is needed to file the Export/Import Declaration and receive a confirmation and Customs Reference Numbers.

From a point of view of SAP Transportation Management solution the Trade Compliance and Customs check functionality is embedded in the transport documents. APIs in the form of Service interfaces are provided from SAP TM to integrate SAP Global Trade Services (SAP GTS)

For Trade Compliance Check:

  • TradeComplianceCheckSUITERequest_Out
  • TradeComplianceCheckSUITEConfirmation_In

Further information on setup and process can be found in the product help

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_ON-PREMISE/e3dc5400c1cc41d1bc0ae0e7fd9aa5a2/973af566a5eb481da51...

For Customs process:

  • ExportDeclarationSUITERequest_Out
  • ExportDeclarationSUITEConfirmation_In

Further information on setup and process can be found in the product help

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_ON-PREMISE/e3dc5400c1cc41d1bc0ae0e7fd9aa5a2/9eaf60c26c9b4067acd...

Freight Unit being the representation of Cargo being transported is near to the Compliance Management function with clear status for Embargo, Legal Control and Sanctioned Party Screening, for each material shipped. Checks are performed during creation and any relevant change to the freight unit data to always stay compliant. Also, once the “shipment” or what we call as a Freight Order is created with additional logistical information and Carrier involved, compliance check is also performed to stay compliant before the start of execution.

Customs Management (receiving export declaration confirmation etc.) is more on the “shipment” level or Freight Order Level. Before filing for customs declaration certain information like shipment route, packaged cargo, involved countries, Customs Invoice etc. is needed. Most of this information is already available in the Freight Order, customs invoice can be requested from the Freight Order.

Specific Customs and Compliance status are made visible in the Freight Order and execution blocks are enforced until the shipment has all the necessary required approvals in place.

Happy reading !!!

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