Foreign Trade Management: SAP GTS

Compliance Management in SAP GTS offers various functions that support companies in complying with import and export control regulations. The sanctions list check, embargo check and legal control components enable the monitoring of business transactions requiring a license and compliance with legal regulations that restrict or prohibit trade with countries, political groups and individuals.

Sanctions list check

The sanctions list check ensures that companies do not maintain any business relationships with sanctioned persons or organizations. For this purpose, all document and business partner data from the previous systems used are compared with the current sanctions lists. If there are any matches, the relevant documents or business partners are automatically blocked to ensure that no further business relationships can be entered into and that, for example, deliveries or the confirmation of new orders are prevented. The blocked data is added to a worklist, where it is subject to a detailed check and final assessment (release or blocking) by the specialist department.

Embargo check

The embargo check ensures that the legal regulations for business relationships with embargoed countries are checked and complied with. For this purpose, the countries from the partner data of the document data from the source system are compared with the embargo countries maintained in SAP GTS. If there are matches, the corresponding documents are blocked to ensure that the necessary permits and documents can be obtained before the goods are delivered or the order is confirmed to the customer. The blocked documents are placed in a worklist, where they are available for detailed checking and final assessment (release or blocking) by the specialist department.

Legal control

The legal control ensures that the applicable regulations for trade in products subject to authorization (such as dual-use goods) are complied with. For this purpose, the products are compared with the product classifications stored in SAP GTS based on the country of receipt or reference from the document data of the upstream system. Depending on the approval requirement, approvals stored in the system can be found automatically during the check. If no approval is found, for example because an individual approval has to be requested, the document is blocked until final processing (release or blocking) by the department to ensure that follow-up activities such as order confirmation or goods delivery cannot be carried out.

Customs Management in SAP GTS supports companies in the processing of imports and exports. Among other things, SAP GTS offers the possibility of electronic communication with the customs authorities of the individual countries as well as options for automating data entry for customs declarations. This accelerates and automates the customs clearance process and helps to reduce the overall costs of handling legally relevant processes.

Import

When goods are received from a third country (purchase or returns), they must be presented to the customs authorities, i.e. declared. They must then be released for a customs procedure (e.g. free circulation) within a specified period. To do this, an import customs declaration must be created, on the basis of which the customs authority determines the import duties and taxes due. In SAP GTS, this is done using the preliminary documents such as the purchase orders or deliveries from the upstream systems and customs-specific master data such as the customs tariff number, which is stored in the GTS product master. This significantly reduces the amount of manual data entry required. In addition, communication with the customs authority can take place electronically, making it possible to send and receive applications and approvals without losing time, which further speeds up the entire import process and makes it more efficient.

Export

If goods are delivered to a third country (sale or return), they must be declared to the customs authorities. An export declaration is created for this purpose. SAP GTS creates this export declaration on the basis of preliminary documents, usually pro forma invoices from the upstream systems, and supports various customs procedures such as the simplified procedure. All export data is also taken from the preliminary documents and supplemented with customs-specific master data, which reduces manual data entry and speeds up processing. Communication with the customs authorities also takes place electronically, which means that applications and approvals can be sent and received without delay, increasing the efficiency of the export process and enabling faster processing.

Electronic Compliance Reporting in SAP GTS supports companies in fulfilling their legal obligations in the area of intra-Community trade within the European Union. It enables the automated creation and transmission of statistical reports (INTRASTAT) to the competent authorities of the EU member states. This data is used to make statements about the intra-European movement of goods and thus the economic activity of the EU. For this purpose, SAP GTS uses the document data resulting from the logistics processes of the corresponding reporting period and generates the required Intrastat reports.

Risk Management in SAP GTS offers companies the opportunity to reduce the financial risk associated with their foreign trade activities. The preference processing, letter of credit processing and export refund components can be integrated into the standard processes for handling foreign trade processes.

Preference processing

Preference processing in SAP GTS supports companies in fulfilling the necessary legal requirements for customs preferences. Customs preferences enable customers based in a third country to import goods duty-free or at a reduced rate of duty, which gives the exporter a price advantage and thus strengthens its competitiveness.

In SAP GTS, the preference entitlement of products is determined on the basis of the preference calculation (taking into account preferential agreements and parts lists of the products) as well as existing supplier declarations. It is also possible to request and manage supplier declarations on the supplier side and to create supplier declarations on the customer side. Communication with business partners can be completely electronic.

Letter of credit processing

SAP GTS offers functions for managing and monitoring letters of credit, which are used to hedge financial risks for import and export transactions. The letters of credit received from the bank can be maintained in the system and supplemented with all relevant delivery and document data in order to assign them to the import and export documents. This makes it possible to monitor the status of the letters of credit. The system automatically recognizes when your import or export business partner is relevant for the letter of credit processing and prompts you to assign a letter of credit to this business partner.

Export refund

SAP GTS supports companies with the “Export refund” function when applying for export subsidies. GTS checks the invoices for relevant deliveries for products that are relevant for export refunds and determines whether a refund is relevant. It also checks whether an export license is required for the refund-relevant products and, if so, whether it still needs to be applied for. The software determines the refund rates, writes down the values of export licenses and generates the necessary forms for the customs authorities.