Freight Contract
Definition
In Trader’s and Scheduler’s Workbench, freight contracts represent agreements with a vessel carrier and contain the agreed upon terms, conditions and rates for bulk shipments. You can create freight contracts to represent agreements, such as time charters, voyage charters, or contracts of affreightment.
Use
During scheduling, the system uses the data from freight contracts to calculate laytime, demurrage, and despatch. The system also compares voyage data with freight contracts to check if the time period, locations, and products scheduled for a shipment violate the agreement specified in the freight contract.
During scheduling, the system checks freight contracts for the following data:
- Vessel availability (system checks if freight contract exists)
- Freight costs (standard only)
- Laytime agreements
- Start and end events for laytime
- Demurrage rates
- Deductions (events which are not or are only partially considered to be a part of laytime, such as poor weather).
Integration
The maintenance transactions for sales and purchase contracts include data fields where you can maintain freight contract information, such as charter party, laytime, and demurrage agreements. For example, to create a freight contract for chartering a vessel, you create a purchase contract and add the freight contract information in the TSW Details. You access the TSW Details dialog box from the maintenance transactions for sales and purchase contracts. The TSW Details dialog box includes tabs and fields for freight contract information. In Customizing you can also define a customer-specific tab.
When you make changes to the Distribution Schedule in Three-Way Pegging or in Nomination Maintenance and the changes are relevant to a freight contract, the system checks the data in the corresponding freight contract. In Three-Way Pegging the system includes freight contracts in the Transportation Avails. In both Three-Way Pegging and Nomination Maintenance, the system uses the data in freight contracts when performing availability checks for scheduled vessels. In addition, the system checks freight contracts for the agreed rules and events that are the basis for calculating laytime and demurrage.
Prerequisites
In Customizing for sales and purchasing documents, you define the agreement type for freight contracts. You define the document type for freight contracts based on purchase contracts in Customizing (IMG) for Materials Management under Purchasing ® Contract ® Define Document Types. You define the document type for freight contracts based on sales contracts in Customizing for Sales and Distribution under Sales ® Sales Documents ® Sales Document Header ® Define Sales Document Types.
In Customizing you define the use of TSW Details in freight contracts, including the customer-defined data for freight contracts. The Customizing definition is based on the contract type. You define these settings in Customizing for Industry Solution Oil & Gas (Downstream) ® TSW (Trader’s and Scheduler’s Workbench) ® Basic Functions ® TSW Details. There you make the following Customizing settings:
- Specify use of TSW details
- Maintain incompletion behavior
- Define event date types
- Activate TSW screens in sales documents
- Activate TSW screens in purchase documents
- Default event rules in sales documents
- Default event rules in purchase documents
- Maintain Business Add-Ins for TSW Details
Activities
To create a freight contract based on a purchase contract, do the following:
- From the SAP Easy Access menu, choose Logistics ® Materials Management ® Purchasing ® Outline Agreement ® Contract ® Create.
- The Create Contract – Initial screen appears. Enter the required data, such as vendor, agreement type, agreement date, and purchasing organization.
If you want to create services for the line items in the contract, you must enter Service (D) in the Item category field and enter an account assignment.
- Choose Enter.
- In the Create Contract – Header Data screen, enter the validity end date and choose Enter. The end date represents the validity period of the contract and is a mandatory entry.
- Enter the required item data, such as the target value quantity and choose Enter.
- Choose Overview in the application toolbar. In the Create Contract: Item Overview screen, enter the items.
- Optional: Select a line item and choose Item ® Services in the menu.
- Optional: In the Service Specifications: Contract specs. for item Maintain screen, enter a description of the service. Choose Enter and then choose Back.
- In the Create Contract: Item Overview screen, choose TSW Details.
- In the TSW Details dialog box enter the required freight contract data on the Charter1 tab, such as the vehicle, start and end date for the laytime, load and discharge locations, and product. On the Charter2 tab you enter vehicle information, such as the vehicle speed.
- Enter the required data on the Laytime and Laytime Terms tabs.
- Optional: In the Laytime Terms tab, you can enter a predefined laytime term code in the Layt. code field. Based on the laytime term code, the system generates a list of start and end events, as well as a list of influencing events (for example, weather or ballast).
- Optional: Choose Suggest document line item to apply the proposed laytime start and end events.
- Choose Enter and Save.
You can also create a freight contract based on a sales contract. To access the sales contract maintenance, from the SAP Easy Access menu choose Logistics-> Sales and Distribution-> Sales -> Contract-> Create. Just as with the procedure for purchase contracts, enter the required data for the sales contract. Enter the required freight information in the TSW Details dialog box.
See also: