Exploring The App “Origin Of Goods” In SAP GTS

As an importer or a domestic operator, accurately collecting and documenting the origin of the externally-procured product and batches is of the utmost importance since it determines the duties, possible trade preference options available, and import restrictions that apply to the shipment.

As a matter of fact, the Country/Region of Origin is a mandatory attribute for Customs treatment, duty assessment, and anti-dumping.

Non-preferential origin refers to the country where a product is either wholly obtained or entirely produced. It can also be the last country where the product underwent substantial transformation. Minor or minimal processing carried out in another location does not usually change the product’s origin status.

With the Manage Country/Region of Origin app, you can manage the country and region of origin for your externally procured products directly in SAP GTS.

Let us explore how this new feature works in SAP GTS Edition for Hana.

How does the flow of information look like?

Since there is no batch information in the Import declaration, the link is retrieved from inbound delivery item.
Both Import declaration before and after GR are supported.
Inbound Delivery can be transferred to GTS even if Customs Management is not activated consuming a certain API.

How does the back-end configuration look like?

Activate the plant for Origin of Goods.

Origin can be determined based on three sources, namely LTSD, Import declaration and Inbound Delivery. Based on the order of preference, the sequence can be configured.

The three sources of information.

1. Long Term Supplier Declaration

2. Customs Import Declaration

3. Inbound Delivery

How does the determination work?

Once the source documents have been transferred from S/4 to GTS, the determination of Country/Region of Origin report should be executed or scheduled as a background job to create new entries or updates in Manage Country/Region of Origin App.

Similarly, update of Batch Stock can be executed or scheduled as a background job to capture batches with stock in the determination base.

Working with “Manage Country/Region of Origin” app.

Upon executing, determination result list is populated for products and/or batches.

Exploring further down for a particular product, in determination base, the relevant list of material documents is also listed. This is the result of the report “determination of country/region of origin”

The logic is influenced by the “Determination Method” selection in the customizing.

In case of batch managed products, report “Schedule update of Batch Stock” constantly updates the current quantity. When the stock becomes zero, the batch is not relevant anymore for determining the Country or Region and will be moved to “Completed Batches”

When multiple batches are used without any unique value and alert is raised and the Country of origin is left blank at the header.

If the last batch listed in the determination base is relevant and has stock, then it is also possible to change in edit mode and mark it as expended. A user justification will be needed in such cases. Where upon the alert will be removed and Country of Origin at header level will become RO.

Important aspects to consider.

In case a GR falls within the validity of a released Inbound LTSD, but CoO hasn't been maintained in the LTSD, the LTSD shouldn't be displayed in the app. Same applies for Inbound Delivery.
If Inbound LTSD is created and released and has CoO maintained, but the Product is in Edit Mode, the new value will not be populated immediately. A background job can be scheduled to rerun.
A reissued LTSD containing CoO, overwrites the old LTSD as a source.
For the LTSDs where an alternative LTSD issuer exist than the actual supplier from the GR, there will be no updates with the LTSD document in the app.
If an processed GR in the Origin of Goods App is cancelled in the Feeder System, that GR will be moved to Completed Documents after execution of “Schedule Determination of Country/Region”.
In case of batches, if a GR is marked as expended, the GR is moved to completed documents, but also the corresponding batch is moved to completed batches.
Source Overview will be populated as long the source document contains origin information. If no source exist for a particular GR, or the source documents do not contain origin, or the source is a manual maintenance of an user, the Source Overview will be empty.

Finally, once a unique country/region of origin is populated at the header level of the app, it is then automatically transferred back to the product master data in S4.