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Discharging the Transit Procedure with SAP
Customs Transit takes place when goods are moved between different customs territories. With the help of customs transit procedure, import of goods can be postponed and therefore customs duties, taxes and commercial policy measures can be temporarily suspended. Import of goods, then, takes place at the point of destination rather than at the point of entrance into customs territory.
Nowadays, there are couple of transit procedures in European Union available. The blog explains Union and Common transit procedures and how SAP applications can help during discharging of such procedures. To achieve the aim, several SAP systems are used to handle the business process - SAP S/4HANA 2020 Enterprise Recourse Planning system, SAP Extended Warehouse Management 9.5 (EWM) and SAP Global Trade Services 11 (GTS).
When performing customs transit procedures in the EU, the following options of Union or Common transit are available:
Placing the goods into transit procedure electronically is done in the NCTS system.
New Computerized Transit System (NCTS) makes it possible to submit and process transit declarations using electronic communication with customs authorities. Communication between the declarant and customs authorities is then performed via electronic messages such as acceptance notification, release of goods, unloading permission, etc.
Since SAP GTS supports electronic communication with customs authorities, its functionality is sufficient to implement robust and reliable business process in SAP landscape by connecting it to the NCTS system.
Authorized Consignee is allowed to use simplified transit procedure. The goods arriving under a Union T-transit procedure can be received at customs or at a temporary storage facility that belongs to the business without having to present the goods to the customs authorities.
Authorized consignee has the following benefits in the NCTS system:
Transit authorizations and guarantees are then maintained in SAP GTS, so the system can automatically determine a simplified process and assign appropriate guarantees to the declaration.
When performing the discharging of the transit procedure, it is possible to optimize the whole business process by implementing it in the SAP Landscape. The first option of discharging the T1 transit is performed within S/4HANA-GTS landscape. The whole business process will consist of several steps:
After all, the declaration was processed and the transit procedure was discharged. Now the goods will remain in temporary storage during a legally defined time limit, until the owner decides how to process them further.
The whole process remains pretty similar to one, defined in the previous step, but now Warehouse Management System is included in our landscape. WMS enables advanced tracking of different types of stocks and controlling of warehouse activities based on the good’s customs status. The whole procedure will consist of the following steps:
Note: In case of ASN (Advanced Shipping Notification), inbound delivery will be created in SAP S/4HANA system automatically. If no MRN number is supplied with ASN, then it is necessary (system allows) to fill an MRN number in SAP EWM System:
Assigning the MRN number to the Inbound Delivery and setting the status “In Yard” will block the document in the EWM system, so unloading of the truck will not be possible until such permission from customs authorities is received. In the next step SAP GTS communicates with the customs authorities in order to receive such permission.
Such a message should allow unloading of the goods out of the transportation unit.
Next, physical unloading of transportation unit and goods receipt posting can take place. Customs stock in the warehouse gets increased. At this moment, the goods were still not cleared; therefore, the stock is kept under a customs restricted status (C1):
This status, though, allows the owner of goods to move the stock to the dedicated storage bin, which will trigger stock change according to the corresponding Availability Group (C2). Nevertheless, such stock still remains restricted by customs authorities because goods still were not cleared (non-Union goods):
When the transit procedure is discharged in SAP GTS, the goods are placed into Temporary Storage where the decision of the next processing steps should be made. There they can be further processed during a legally defined time period - i.e., cleared for free circulation or re-exported. After the goods are cleared, SAP GTS releases the goods and sends an update to the EWM system, where the stock type changes from “Customs Blocked” to “Unrestricted”.
When keeping uncleared goods in the facility, SAP EWM can track their precise location, stock and movements. It supports several integration scenarios with SAP GTS Customs module, among them are:
So far, the following points were described:
Important points for consideration before implementing the transit discharging procedure:
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