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 and Region of Origin is a mandatory attribute for Customs treatment, duty assessment, and anti-dumping.

In many organizations, the non-preferential country of origin (COO) is a critical data point used in systems like SAP Global Trade Services for duty calculation, compliance checks, and documentation validation. However, this data is typically gathered and maintained in ERP systems by supply chain teams handling purchasing and sales flows.

This creates a fundamental issue: supply chain personnel often confuse country of origin with country of supply (where goods are shipped from). Since they are not the true owners of this data and are primarily focused on operational execution, COO is frequently entered incorrectly or without proper validation—simply as a mandatory field required for processing.

 The impact is significant. Incorrect COO data leads to:

• Errors in duty calculations & preference determination
• Inconsistencies in documentation (e.g. delivery notes, invoices)
• Time-consuming manual checks and corrections

When discrepancies are identified, they are usually corrected within GTS by customs or compliance teams. However, these corrections are not synchronized back to the ERP, resulting in persistent data misalignment between systems.

At its core, the problem is one of misaligned ownership and responsibility. COO is a compliance-critical attribute that should be owned and governed by customs or GTS teams, yet it is currently maintained by supply chain users who lack the context and accountability to manage it accurately.

An effective solution would involve shifting ownership of COO to customs/GTS, along with better system integration to ensure consistency between ERP and GTS, reducing errors, manual rework, and compliance risk.

In this area, a new Manage Country/Region of Origin app has been delivered with SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA 2025 Feature Pack Stack 01 released in April 2026.

Thanks to this new feature, organizations can:

 

Manage the non-preferential country and region of origin for externally procured products and/or batches

 

Rely on high transparency, by identifying the country at the good receipt level

 

Get automatic update of the country and/or region of origin and region of origin in feeder system

 

Integration with other modules from SAP Global Trade Services, edition for HANA such as preference and customs management

It is important to understand the distinction between non-preferential origin and preferential origin of a product.

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.

Preferential origin, on the other hand, applies to products that meet specific criteria set out in a particular free trade agreement. These rules determine whether a product qualifies for reduced or zero tariffs under that agreement.

 

How does it work?

 

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

Provided the country (or region) of origin is available in either an import customs declaration, a long-term supplier declaration (LTSD) or an inbound delivery, it can be retrieved automatically and assigned to the product master data, and batch master data if applicable, in the feeder system. This information can still, of course, be manually overwritten should it be required.

The process starts in the feeder system where the good receipt information resides and is transferred to SAP GTS. There, the information relevant for country of origin is consolidated and analysed in the new app Manage Country/Region of origin and determination approach applied on a scenario logic.

 

Scenario 1 – the country of origin can be determined

 

 

If the country or region of origin is documented and the same is true for every good receipt, the product master data is automatically updated in the feeder system.

Illustration in SAP GTS:

The 2 source documents – here Long-Term Supplier Documents – both display “Spain” as country of origin and “Baleares” as region of origin, so origin information can be determined.

Note: a similar approach applies to batch-managed products with stock levels being considered into the determination to define the country of origin for each batch individually. Here, product master data won’t be updated though but can be manually maintained.

 

Scenario 2 – the country of origin can’t be determined

 

In case the origin information for a given product cannot be automatically established, SAP Global Trade Services will raise an alert. The user can then drill-down into the system to review the source data and investigate: is it due to multiple countries from various suppliers for the same product? Is it due to source documents missing? Etc. If the origin can be established, the user can manually maintain in the source information and correct or adjust the final origin.

Illustration in SAP GTS:

 

Want to learn more?

 

If this short summary wasn’t sufficient to satisfy your curiosity – and it most likely is the case, then I would suggest watching the recording of the SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA 2025 FPS01 Release Overview session that was delivered a few weeks ago.

During this webinar, Volker Mohr from SAP GTS Product Management, Carmen Abelein and Torsten Stolz from SAP GTS Engineering, provided an update on the various enhancements delivered in this new version. Focusing on Preference Management, Customs Management, Product Master Data and of course, a deep-dive into Origin of Goods with various scenarios and a live demo.

 

What’s next?

 

As its name suggest, this is only the very first Feature Pack but many more enhancements are planned to come, including Feature Pack 2 planned for end of the year.

To be amongst the first to know what’s next, you have 2 options – which are not exclusive:

 

1. Register to the SAP Roadmap Update for International Trade Management Solutions session planned for June 23, 2026

 

 

Want to influence the roadmap?

 

If you would like to help shape the future of the solution, then take part in the Continuous Influence session for SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA. 

Voting for the next review cycle is open until end of June 2026.

Improvement requests are prioritized by the community through voting, so cast your votes for proposed enhancements important to you. Review of an Improvement Request by SAP Product Management will happen when the request has reached the minimum threshold of 20 votes or more from customers with a first review cycle planned in Q3 2026.

And if you are interested in learning more about SAP solutions for Governance, Risk, and Compliance, feel free to fill-in the demo request form!

 

Thank you, Prashanth Kaja – SAP GTS Customer Advisory for EMEA, for collaborating on this blog.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

• What are the pre-requisites for “Origin of goods” integration with SAP S/4HANA

The prerequisites are mentioned in the SAP Note 3710399 – Origin of goods: Introduction of the function for managing the origin of goods

 

• What versions of feeder systems support this?

This is supported by feeder system SAP S/4HANA 2021 private cloud edition or higher. SAP ECC is not supported.

 

• Is the field COO now available in the long-term supplier declaration (LTSD) maintenance?

Yes

 

• Batches on material level vs Batches at plant level, what is supported?

Currently batches at plant level are supported.

 

• Will aggregation of long-term supplier declarations (LTSD) still be required? And will preference determination pick the origin from this new app?

Preference determination is independent from origin of goods and does not consider or origin. It depends whether the agreement and yes aggregation of long-term supplier declarations (LTSD) is still required for preference determination.

 

• Does the stock data get synchronized with the origin that has been determined?

It depends on whether it is a batch-managed product or not. For batched managed products a report is available to update the stock, for non-batched managed product, stock is not considered.

 

• Will the country of origin in the SAP S/4HANA product master be cleared in case the country is not unique?

It is customizable. It is possible to delete or leave it as-is until the user decides to manually intervene.

 

• How can we maintain multiple origin countries for a single product ID?

This is only possible when batches are activated and used.