As countries move increasingly toward a global market economy, businesses become more involved in and influenced by foreign trade. This affects not only the vendor and customer relationship, but that of foreign subsidiaries within a single company.

With this opening of market opportunities come regulations, licenses, import tariffs, and an increasing amount of paperwork required by government agencies and other legal entities.

SAP Retail provides extensive support for world-wide export/import trade as well as deliveries within specific trade areas (such as the EU or NAFTA), thus automating the burdensome paperwork and freeing your shipping and receiving departments to concentrate on moving merchandise quickly. R/3 functionality includes:

• Maintenance of data specific to foreign trade in the following master records:

• Customer master
• Vendor record
• Article master
• Purchasing info record

• Copying data specific to foreign trade into purchasing and sales documents

• Data interface for the retrieval of export-specific data

• Export control

• Government reporting

• Preference procedures

Full details of R/3 foreign trade functionality is contained in the corresponding general information as listed below.