This blog post provides an overview of the reporting capability in the Preference Management functionality of SAP Global Trade Services (SAP GTS).
There are logical groupings provided in the SAP Fiori launchpad for the relevant reports in Preference Management processing, which include Supplier’s Declarations from Supplier/Customer, Preference Determination – Sales Documents, Preference Determination – Products, and Preference Determination – Production Documents (for identity-based preference processing). In addition, a number of relevant reports are available in Master Data – Preference Management. In this section, we cover the reports for each of these categories.
A comprehensive list of available Preference Management reports in SAP GTS is provided in this table.
All of these reports depend on the specified administrative unit (AU), which a user must enter before running any of the following reports. In this section, we use an AU in Germany for illustration purposes only.
The following reports are described in more detail in the following sections:
Long-term supplier declarations (LTSD) proposals are created based on the feeder system documents transferred (purchase orders and/or goods receipts). Users can manage requests for LTSDs to their suppliers in addition to reminders for open requests. With the Manage Requests – Long-Term Supplier’s Declaration report shown below, users can manage LTSD requests either triggered from the feeder system or created manually.
After selecting the corresponding EU Preference Central Department (Administrative Unit) and period (Validity Period), a list of relevant LTSD requests is shown. From here, the user can perform the necessary follow-on actions.
The other report, Manage Long-Term Supplier’s Declarations – Inbound, is used to perform activities (change, display, release, delete, or cancel) on inbound LSTDs that users receive from suppliers.
Outbound LTSDs are created based on billing documents from the feeder system. In addition, LTSDs can be checked and, if required, processed before submission.
Upon selection of relevant criteria EU Preference Central Department (Administrative Unit) and period (Validity Period), the Manage Long-Term Supplier’s Declarations – Outbound report provides an overview of relevant documents, as shown in the next figure. From this report, users can create, display, change, delete, and send outbound LTSDs to their customers. In this example, the company can issue one LTSD for a customer in Belgium.
Preference determination is performed for all product bills of materials (BOMs) that users have transferred to the SAP GTS system. The result of preference determination is based on parameters that are defined for each determination run.
To further facilitate this process for product identifier-specific preference determination, SAP GTS offers the Display Worklist of Process/Production Orders report. A user can display this report to get an overview of all process or production orders that have been transferred to SAP GTS and are ready for determination. Typically, users accessing the worklist do this by filtering on the Worklist Status field (see figure below) on the selection screen, which allows users to only display process orders with a specific status.
By filtering on the Ready for Determination status, the system will provide an overview of process orders that have been transferred from the feeder system and are ready for calculation, as shown in the next figure. Users can also schedule the determination as an automated background job.
Preference Management master data is critical to the compliant execution of preference processes. Key data elements include the product master with specific data fields for Preference Management such as procurement indicator, prices, and preferential data. In addition, the BOMs in SAP GTS are used as the basis for preferential calculation.
The origin and the use in production of a batch across several production levels are displayed in a list, which you can find in the SAP Fiori report called Display Where-Used List of Batches. The composition of semifinished and finished products must be confirmed to determine the preferential status of a batch.
Transfer logs help users ensure that the SAP GTS system is in sync with the applicable feeder systems. In addition, rules of the agreement, uploaded or manually created, can be consulted in the Display Preference Rules report. Users can create preference rules manually or upload them to your system from a data provider. Users can display all the preference rules for a given agreement.
There are also transactions linked to the country setup. In SAP GTS, users can assign countries to country groups via Customizing (SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA > General Settings > Legal Regulations > Assign Countries/Regions to Country/Region Group) to manage, for example, the activation of legal regulations or the setup of the determination strategy at a country group level. Entering a country of departure/destination in the selection screen (see next figure) produces a list of country groups to which the specified country has been assigned.
The result is illustrated in the final figure. It lists the relevant preferential agreement (Agreement) for each relevant country or region (Ctry/Reg.). It also allows the user to efficiently monitor which agreements are configured in the system and which corresponding geographic location they adhere to.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book Implementing SAP Global Trade Services by Nick Moris, Pablo LeCour, and Li Yu.