Outlining Product Compliance and International Trade Compliance in Procurement

Product Compliance is a way to manage the compliance for your products by assessing their marketability in different countries and regions, by classifying products according to dangerous goods regulations, and by shipping required safety data sheets.

For compliance-relevant products in a stock transfer order, the system checks whether a safety data sheet is required and whether the relevant safety data sheet is available in the specified languages.

If a product has been classified as a dangerous good, the system also checks if all necessary dangerous goods data is available, and whether transportation of the product is allowed.

Depending on the outcome of this check, the system sets the corresponding status for the item. Based on the item status, the system also sets a status in the header of the stock transfer order.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud for product compliance helps enforce compliance at each step of the product lifecycle. With the integration of compliance information in purchasing processes such as stock transfers, companies can ensure that safety information is available and compliant transports leave the company premises.

• Ensure safe and compliant stock transports of hazardous materials.
• Protect the brand and safeguard on-time delivery.

• Automatic check of all compliance-relevant products for available safety data sheets and allowed dangerous goods transports
• Checks executed at the creation of intracompany stock transport orders
• Automatic block of stock transport orders with items with missing safety data sheets, missing dangerous goods classifications, or forbidden transports on all modes of transport
• Automatic removal of blocks once safety data sheets and dangerous goods classifications are available and transports are allowed

Checks to prevent non-compliant procurement processes (Chemical Compliance Approval for Purchased Material and Supplier 31G)

• Block items if no compliant transport is possible
• Dangerous goods checks for the following:
  • Purchase orders with own transport responsibility
  • Intracompany and intercompany stock transport orders
  • Intercompany sales processes

The following status fields for the results of the product compliance checks are available on purchase order header level and on purchase order item level:

• Product Compliance Supplier Check Status
• Product Marketability Status
• Dangerous Goods Status
• Safety Data Sheet Status

These status fields are available in the following apps:

• Manage Purchase Orders
• Create Purchase Order - Advanced

The product compliance status fields are available in the API service:

API_PURCHASEORDER_PROCESS_SRV on the purchase order header node and on the purchase order item node.

International Trade Compliance can be use to ensure that international trading transactions meet international trade provisions.

International Trade trade compliance checks are integrated and performed for the following purchasing documents with the corresponding services:

In the purchase order, you can see the commodity code on the item level under Material Data. The commodity code is taken over from the product master data and cannot be changed. For items without a product number, this field can be changed and a commodity code can be entered.

• During the initial creation of the purchase order, the Trade Compliance checks are performed. If the result is a block in International trade, the purchase order can only be saved in status On Hold. As soon as the block in international trade is released, the purchase order is saved again and the On Hold status is released (if there are no other issues apart from Trade Compliance that result in an On Hold status).
• If the purchase order is changed again, and, for example, a new item is added where there is again a Trade Compliance check with a negative result, then the status On Hold can not be set again and hence the purchase order can not be saved.
• The relevant partner and country are taken from the goods supplier. If there is no goods supplier, then the supplier is relevant.

For Purchase Scheduling Agreements, the international trade checks only work with the SAP Fiori app for Manage Purchase Scheduling Agreements. You have to make sure that you add the schedule lines in the scheduling agreement before you are saving. In addition, saving should be carried out as "Save in Preparation", otherwise the function does not work.

Note

In follow-up documents, the assigned licenses and the classification data are taken over from the predecessor document.

A trade compliance check is triggered on saving an item by choosing Save. If the trade compliance check returns an error, then a purchase requisition item is created in a blocked state. In this case, the workflow can be initiated but no follow-on document can be created. The error also triggers the generation of a Trade Compliance document with reference to the purchase requisition item. The trade compliance officer can view and work on the compliance document. Once the trade compliance issues are resolved by the compliance officer, the item is saved and if there are no further issues in trade compliance, then the item is unblocked so that all follow-on processes continue as usual.

• Prerequisite: Make sure to enter a desired supplier or fixed supplier in the purchase requisitions.
• If the purchase requisition is blocked by trade compliance checks, this is indicated in the document itself in the Blocking Indicator field.
  • In the Manage Purchase Requisitions - Professional SAP Fiori app, this field is displayed in the main information on item level.
  • In the visually harmonized Create Purchase Requisition – Advanced app, this field is displayed on item level in the Status tab.
• If this field is set to Blocked by Trade Compliance, then the follow-on function of creating a purchase order is prevented by the system.
• If the trade compliance block is resolved, this field is reset.

Note

Trade compliance checks are not triggered for items of origin Self-Service Procurement (S).