When you answer this question it is helpful if you know what functions are available to you when you use the plant organizational unit:

• Separate planning (for example, replenishment planning for warehouses)
• Automatic management of addresses
• Separate holiday calendars
• More comprehensive functions for stock transfers
• Specific stock updates on a value basis (separate valuation, separate account assignment, stock reporting on a value basis)
• Wider-ranging possibilities for assigning authorizations
• Not country-specific – that is international borders can be ignored (using the plants abroad concept (within the European Union))
  

Plants are usually located in the same country as the company code.

However, you can create exceptions to this rule using the plants abroad concept. The following prerequisites must be fulfilled:

• You must ensure that procedures for tax-related data is adhered to (the advance return for tax on sales and purchases).

• You can only have one tax number for each combination of country and company code.
• Tax determination from Sales and Distribution (SD) and Financial Accounting (FI) must yield the same results (duplicate tax codes mean extra data maintenance).
• You can enter one additional reporting country for each combination.

• You must ensure that the requirements relating to trade statistics are adhered to (this is guaranteed within the European Union).

You can use plants abroad provided you have no reporting requirements other than:

• Advance returns for tax on sales/purchases
• Intra-European Union trade statistics (Intrastat (within the European Union))
• Extra-European Union trade statistics (Extrastat (Netherlands, Germany))
• EU sales list (FI)

This means that property, buildings, staff, and so on of regional warehouses abroad do not belong to the domestic company code.

You cannot use the plants abroad concept if your plants are genuine plant locations (that is, defined as legal entities).

You must check requirements for the papers you need (export papers, import documents, shipping papers).

You can carry out cross-company code stock transfers. However, if you use the plants abroad concept, notifiable processes within a single company code may result – for example, stock transfers using MM and SD.