Managing Product-Related Export Control

For political reasons, legal restrictions can be imposed on the freedom of trade in the cross-border movement of goods. In the EU, for example, the export of dual-use items is significantly restricted, as in other signatory states of the Wassenaar Arrangement. Specific authorizations or licenses are required for the export of such goods.

In the United States, export control measures are established in a similar way. The CCL states specific control reasons for this purpose, such as anti-terrorism and non-proliferation of arms, weapons, and nuclear technology. It therefore addresses weapons and arms technology in particular, but also dual-use items.

In SAP GTS, licenses and authorizations are specific datasets that you create, change and display using the Manage Licenses app. You can find this app in the SAP Fiori launchpad in the Compliance space on the Legal Control page. You can use the Display Existing Licenses app to obtain an overview of the licenses maintained in your SAP GTS system.

In Customizing, you specify which types of licenses users can manage in legal control. License types are the basic structures of specific licenses and are always assigned to a legal regulation. In delivery Customizing for SAP GTS, there are a number of country-specific license types that you can use directly or as templates for your own license types.

At license type level, you set the parameters for controlling license management in export processes. These include:

• Objects to be checked during license determination, such as the destination country of the export, and the goods list number of the product

• Update of values or quantities

• Fields that can be maintained in a license

• License statuses, such as "requested" or "issued"

The license status determines whether the license can be used in a process. For example, the system can no longer assign an expired license to a document.

The SAP GTS system replicates the sales documents and outbound deliveries transferred from the feeder system in the form of export documents, and uses these documents to check whether the export is permitted.

In legal control, SAP GTS checks whether the export document contains at least one product that is classified as a dual-use item. If it does, the system tries to determine a suitable export license to assign it to the affected export document item or items. If the license determination fails, the system blocks the export document items affected. This block can only be lifted by assigning a license.

You can display blocked export documents and a detailed check log for each item using the Manage Blocked Documents app. You can find this app in the SAP Fiori launchpad in the Compliance space on the Overview page. If you want to check the assignments of licenses to export documents, you can use the Display Assigned Documents app on the Legal Control page. In the Display Documents - Legal Control app, you can display a lists of export documents regardless of their status.

If SAP Note 579357 was implemented in the SAP ECC feeder system, it is not possible to deliver a sales document item and execute other subsequent functions (picking, packing, goods issue posting) when the corresponding export document item is blocked in SAP GTS.

SAP S/4HANA feeder systems do not require any SAP Note implementation for preventing the execution of subsequent functions in the goods issue process.

In the feeder system, you can display a list of documents for which the equivalent documents are blocked in SAP GTS. To do so, choose the Documents tab in the area menu for communication with SAP GTS. To display sales documents and outbound deliveries, you can use the Display Blocked Export Documents transaction (transaction code /SAPSLL/BL_DOC_SD_R3). To display purchase orders, you can use the Legal Control: Display Blocked Import Documents transaction (transaction code /SAPSLL/BL_DOC_MM_R3).

License determination is based on a condition technique that is specific to SAP GTS. This condition technique uses export control-relevant criteria such as the dual-use item or ECCN of the product being exported and the export destination country or country group. You can create and delete strategies for license type determination using the Manage Determination Strategies app. To display existing strategies, you can use the Display Determination Strategies app (both in the Compliance space on the Legal Control page).