Data that determines whether a material is subject to legal control, and if it is, to which export control class the material belongs.

The material master record contains a segment so that you can assign the appropriate export control class to each material within a given legal regulation when you enter the material-specific data relevant to legal control.

Within a legal regulation, each material has a specific legal control class and can only be assigned to one grouping for legal control. Since there are also cases in which products with identical export control numbers have to be treated differently from the point of view of export law, groupings are also recorded in the material master.

When you activate legal control, every material in the system is subject to legal control. However, there are also materials that are never subject to legal control and should never be checked by the system.

You can ensure that these materials are never checked by maintaining data to indicate an exemption certificate. If a material is exempted from export control, you need to enter relevant data into the Foreign Trade Export view of the material master record. The system only recognizes the material as not relevant for legal control if the material meets the following three conditions in the Legal Control section of the data screen:

• The Exemption Certificate code is set to "B" – Accepted
• The Exemption Certificate Number is maintained
• The Exemption Certificate Issue Date falls before the goods issue date of the export

Material masters maintained in this way are ignored by the system during legal control in sales orders.

At the legal regulation level you determine which material masters the system selects for legal control. For each legal regulation, you can define whether all or no materials are subject to the regulation by default. In Customizing for Foreign Trade/Customs, choose Legal control ® Define Legal Regulations and Assign by Country. For the selected legal regulation, do one of the following:

• Select Indiv. maint. matl master (Individual maintenance of material master) if you do not want materials to be subject to the legal regulation. Then if you do want a particular material to be subject to this regulation, you must mark it explicitly in its material master record.
• Clear Indiv. maint. matl master if you want all materials to be subject to this legal regulation by default. Then you must define the export control class and grouping for all materials in their material master records.