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Foreign Trade

Description

In Release 3.0, the export functionality has been enhanced. It now supports the main elements of foreign trade processing.

Functions have been developed in the following areas:

Data interface for the retrieval of export-specific data

Please refer to the separate Release Note for this.

Export Control

Almost every country attempts to control its own foreign trade, whether to control the drain of natural resources and raw materials for reasons of national security, or as a result of agreements between countries.

The restrictions to which foreign trade transactions are subject can depend on:

Any combination of these features is also possible.

Export control procedure

Export control is dependent on the following three influencing factors

Its task is to determine, whether the goods can be exported, whether licenses are required to do this, and if so, whether these exist. The control elements necessary for this are set in Customizing:

This element contains the legal regulations and the respective license types for each exporting country, for example, the Einzelausfuhrgenehmigung (Individual Export License),the Sammelausfuhrgenehmigung (Collective Export License), the General License or the Distribution License.
Information relevant to export control is stored on countries to which exports are to be made. This information includes, for example, membership of specific international organizations, a general embargo on the country and assignment to certain country groups.
The goods to be exported are classified according to the legal requirements.

Master data

Both the material master and the customer master have been extended so that you can store the relevant data for export control. The different export blocking indicators in the customer master are particularly important. They can be used to show that the customer appears on an official blocking list (for example, TDO, SDN, DHRP).

The data in the licenses which are available to the company is stored in an independent database which includes the following data:

Transactions

Checks in the sales order

On the basis of the requested delivery date, the following checks are carried out for each order item:

The system determines the appropriate license type for the legal regulations and the grouping determined above. When a license type is found, the system searches for an appropriate license in the license master record. This check is carried out for every regulation that is to be checked.
Please note that an item is blocked for export if at least one legal regulation to be checked prohibits the export or if the necessary license does not exist.

The outcome of the export control carried out by the system for each item is stored by order item in the following new segments:

USER-EXITS can be used for implementing checks other than the checks described above.

When export control has been completed for an order item, the item is either blocked or released. Certain subsequent functions must not be performed if the item is blocked. The blocking operation is implemented by the setting of different statuses.

Checks in the delivery

The delivery can only be created if the order item has been assigned the status 'Release' by export control. However, it is necessary to run export control again when you create the delivery, since the export control situation could have changed in the meantime as often the time lapse between the order entry and the delivery is considerable.

If item blocking does not occur until the delivery, picking or goods issue can be prohibited for the delivery item.

Subsequent editing of orders and deliveries

If orders or deliveries are changed, the export list numbers and the groupings from the document and material master for the individual items are automatically compared. If these do not match, export control is run again for these items, since a new classification of the material has apparently taken place in the meantime. This can result in a different license situation.

Update of the license master

Certain export licences have a maximum value which should be considered as the upper limit up to which the license can be used. Thus, several orders or deliveries can be processed by one license. In this case, the cumulative value of the order needs to be recorded. Every time you create an order, you must consequently check whether the remaining open value of the license is sufficient to cover the value of the order. If this is not the case, another license must be used.

Reporting

The following functions are available in Reporting:

Declarations to the authorities

The following declarations to the authorities are supported by the SAP R/3 System:

These declarations can be issued on paper or on diskette as required.

Returns are classified as such in the selection program and can be processed with the respective country-specific programs.

Cancelled documents are also recognized by the selection program.

You create the declarations using the menu path Logistics -> Sales/distribution -> Foreign Trade.

Declarations for the countries of the EU

Intrastat

The Intrastat declaration is now available for the following countries:

Extrastat

This declaration is new for Release 3.0. Business transactions outside of the EU are reported to the responsible authority using the declaration. Declarations can currently be made to the German Federal Office of Statistics.

KOBRA

This declaration is used for sensitive goods. It is only relevant for Germany.

Declarations for countries in NAFTA

SED

The Shipper's Export Declaration is the equivalent of the European EXTRASTAT declaration. It is mandatory for all exports in the U.S.A. It is issued on paper.

AERP

The Automated Export Reporting Procedure is an alternative to the SED (paper copy). The exports can be declared on a monthly basis in the form of diskettes sent to the authorities of the respective state.

HMF

A surcharge is paid to the respective authorities for all export business. You can request a summary of these surcharges from the system.

Preference

Customs tariff preferences are an important means of promoting export. These preferences are based on agreements made between different country groups. The importer of goods to which the agreement applies pays no or reduced import duties. For these financial benefits to apply, the exporter must guarantee preferential treatment for the goods.

In the case of trading goods, the entitlement to preferential treatment is controlled by the existence of a vendor declaration. For finished goods, the entitlement to preferential treatment must be determined. The rules for this are often complicated. The origin of the component parts and the extent to which they have been processed are the main influencing factors.

The basis for entitlement to preferential treatment within the SAP System is the bill of material for identifying the components used. You need to assign a tariff classification to all relevant materials, that is, you need to assign the commodity code.

Basically, there are two procedures for preference determination:

Master data

The following master data has been enhanced to include preference costing:

The following new fields have been included:

specifies whether the entitlement to preferential treatment has been checked for this saleable material
specifies whether a vendor declaration exists and until when it is valid

You can set the following data for the preference situation in Customizing:

preference determination

The individual bills of material, the purchasing info records, the vendor master records and the rules and percentage rates stored in the system are the basis of preference determination.

There are two procedures for preference determination:

The following values are calculated for every preference area:

For every component, the following checks are carried out:

If yes, the component is valuated as an originating product. If not, it is considered as a non-originating product and thus independent of the country of origin.
For a non-originating product, a check is performed to determine whether a classification change has occurred which affects the main component.
A classification change involves a change in the first four digits of the commodity code for the component.
This requirement is checked for every component that is classified as a material from a third country and the material value is totalled in the corresponding fields.

The outcome of preference determination is the minimum sales price which must be achieved so that the relevant order/billing item is classifed as being entitled to preferential treatment. With the outcome of preference determination:

This condition can be entered in the pricing procedure and the net sales price and the preference price compared.

Change system parameters in customizing

Please refer to the section trade" in the Implementation Guide for further details on foreign trade processing.

Changes to the interface

If you want to maintain the master data for foreign trade, flag the field "Foreign trade " for the material and customer master on the screen for "General Data".

In the material master, you must now in addition choose the following menu path on the foreign trade screen Extras -> Sales details -> Export license.

You can access the following functions with the menu path Logistics -> Sales/distribution -> Foreign trade :

Further notes