Communication/Printing Cockpit

Use

Foreign Trade's communication and printing tasks provide automated support to data transmission and document exchange with partners and customs authorities.

You can access most printing and communication functions directly from a single screen in the Foreign Trade/Customs (FT) application. This topic introduces and briefly describes each of these functions.

To go to the Communication/Printing Cockpit from the SAP main menu, choose Start of the navigation path Logistics Next navigation step Sales and distribution (or Materials management) ForeignTrade/ Customs Communication/Printing Cockpit - Communication/Printing. End of the navigation path

Prerequisites

For the Foreign Trade printing and communication functions, you need to make several settings in Customizing . To do this, choose Start of the navigation path Sales and distribution (or Materials management Next navigation step Purchasing) Foreign Trade/ Customs Printing/Communication End of the navigation path in the Implementation Guide .

Features

There are seven sections on the initial screen of the Communication/Printing Cockpit :

Communication and Printing Functions

Section	Function
Printout	Printing of foreign trade documents on paper
Monitoring	Displays output verification and allows changes to documents before printing
Output	Customizing for the printing functions: Displays, changes or creates condition records for output of each document
IDoc documentation	Displays IDoc structures
Environment	Form maintenance: Links to print status and IMG for print control settings
Communication/EDI	Transmission logs for IDocs: Transfers data via electronic means
IDoc	IDoc documentation: Reporting/Monitoring function for IDocs

On the initial screen, there is an additional area that you can fill with a picture or text. You can include the standard picture or a text in this screen by choosing Start of the navigation path Environment Next navigation step Maintain user data End of the navigation path from the initial screen. The standard picture is SD_FT_COM_START. You can create a standard text for display in this section by choosing Tools Form print SAPscript Standard text from the SAP standard menu.

Printout

The most important foreign trade documents for Europe, the USA and Japan are available as print-ready documents. You use this section to print foreign trade documents on paper.

Monitoring

This section is used to verify foreign trade messages and to make changes to documents before you print them.

Output monitoring displays a list of the printed documents. You can use this list as a "printing journal" and supply it to the customs officials. The list contains information about all printed documents.

Before you use this function, you must make settings in Customizing which ensure that the log table is updated.

The Print changes monitoring function lists changes you made to each document using the change transaction.

Some fields can be changed on your foreign trade documents before printing them. You can set the fields that can be changed in Customizing. You can make changes to documents when you print foreign trade documents using the FT print transaction.

Print Scenarios

There are three possible scenarios for printing documents:

Scenario 1 - Printing using the FT print transaction (Transmission time 3)
Scenario 2 - Printing during document processing
Scenario 3 - Printing as a batch process

For all three of these scenarios, the messages are determined via output determination. In Customizing see Start of the navigation path Sales and Distribution Next navigation step Basic functions Output control End of the navigation path .

Output

In this section, you can display, modify or create condition records for

Export billing documents
Import purchase orders

Two monitoring reports provide logs of the printed and modified messages.

Communication/EDI

You use this section to transfer foreign trade data via electronic media by sending intermediate documents (IDocs). See Configuration and Use of the SAP System for Foreign Trade EDI .

Environment

Spool requests

This function links to a printing transaction which allows you to check on the status of printed forms.

Print Control

This function branches to the customizing table Foreign Trade Table for Output Control . It allows you to make changes in the IMG. For example, here you can set an indicator that determines whether commodity codes and goods descriptions are to be printed on forms. See Customizing SD and MM Output Control to Create IDocs .

IDoc

This section contains reports that enable you to

Display lists of IDocs
Display EDI information
Find business content of IDocs
Display IDoc statistics