Global Trade Management – From Business Suite to S/4HANA

If you are already using SAP Global Trade Management (GTM)  within the SAP Business Suite then you may want to know, what is new with SAP S/4HANA Global Trade Management.

Or maybe you have already implemented SAP GTM in SAP S/4HANA and you are planning a release change and want to know now, what is new from the past years?

Based on community interest on both of these scenarios, I am inspired to share this update with you.

Let us start from the beginning…

First, the good news! SAP Global Trade Management became part of the SAP S/4HANA core and is shipped to customers with the very first Release 100. A few highlights to consider:

Business Partner, Material, Credit Check

SAP GTM integrates the business partner, and it is adapted to the longer material number. Since only SAP Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) credit check is allowed in SAP S/4HANA, you can now use scope, which is identical to the SD (Sales & Distribution) credit check in SAP ECC, with the license you already own.

Only SAP S/4HANA on premise

SAP GTM is only available with SAP S/4HANA on premise and not in S/4HANA Cloud. The reason is, that there are no best practice processes defined and there are also no native SAP Fiori apps.

SAP Fiori Apps are available

With SAP S/4HANA new SAP Fiori apps available, but they are no native apps. The standard transactions from SAP GUI are rendered as Web HTML. You are not able to maintain the typical SAP GTM user parameters for the organizational data.

Two new business roles are defined:

• Trader and
• Trading Manager

Role-ID	Role Name	Technical Business Role	Role Description
R0071	Trader	SAP_BR_TRADER	Buys and sells physical products.
R0215	Trading Manager	SAP_BR_TRADING_MANAGER	Responsible for trading business.

As I write this blog, SAP has started to develop native SAP Fiori Apps, but it is not yet announced when they will finally be available.

Some functions were deleted or deactivated

No Retail calculation is possible because Retail was delivered later than SAP GTM within SAP S/4HANA. It is deactivated and should not be used anymore. If you are already using it in the Business Suite, it can be migrated, but should be replaced afterwards.

Invoice Forecasting, logistical options, raw exposer update and differential invoice are Commodity Management Function, and therefore not part of SAP GTM core anymore. If you need them, you must implement the respective SAP S/4HANA component.

Also, the Trading Contract@Web code was deleted in SAP S/4HANA.

New Implementation Guide (IMG)

In the SAP GTM IMG (Implementation Guide) the nodes of the deleted functions were removed here as well. Furthermore, the remaining entries were restructured.

SAP ECC IMG left and SAP S/4HANA IMG on the right

Database Field Changes within Global Trade Management

If you have own custom code, you might have to adjust your code to the new database design to avoid syntax or processing problems.

In the following tables the primary key as well as the field DOCUMENT and PRED_DOCUMENT have changed:

Table	Description
WBASSOC	Global Trade: Association Table
WBGT	Global Trade: Generic Document Information
WBHF	Trading Contract: Document Flow
WBIT	Association Item at Step Level

Furthermore, the table KONDIND (General Document Index for Conditions) is not used anymore. Instead of, the fields are available in table KONH (Conditions (Header)) directly.

For more details as well as how to deal with these changes please read SAP-Note 2198031.

Obsolete Reports, Transactions and PFCG Roles

The following Transactions and their reports are obsolete or replaced by a new version:

Obsolete Report	Obsolete TCode	Successor Report	Successor TCode
RWB2B001 – Trading Contract: General Document Overview	WB24	RWB2BREL – Trading Contract: Follow on document processing	WBRR
RWB2B001 – Trading Contract: General Document Overview	WB25_COMP	RWB2BMAS – Mass Processing (Release and Status update)	WB24N
WB2B_CREATE_TC_USER – Create User for TC At Web	WB2B_NETUSER

The following transactions are obsolete:

Obsolete TCode	Description	Successor TCode
POFO1	Create Portfolio	POFO31
POFO2	Change Portfolio	POFO32
POFO3	Display Portfolio	POFO33

The PFCG Roles SAP_EP_LO_WB20N_N and SAP_EP_LO_WBCB are obsolete. Please use PFCG Role SAP_EP_LO_WB20N or SAP_EP_LO_WZR0N instead.

See also SAP-Note 2204137 for more details.

Process Detail Folder

Process Detail Folder on Trading Contract Item Level is deprecated because the displayed data are providing on other screens as well. So, there is no business needed to display the same information on an additional screen as well.

Letter of Credit

Letter of Credit functionality of Foreign Trade Application is no longer support within sales processing. Therefore, you cannot run reports or processes within trading contract processing related to this kind of letter of credit functionality.

Further information can be found in SD related simplification items.

New structure of help documentation

Although the Trading Contract is document which allows you to enter Sales and Purchasing Trading Contracts in a unified way, to sell goods to customers is the main purpose of a trading company.

Perhaps this alignment is the reason why within SAP S/4HANA the help documentation is not located anymore in logistics, but in sales.

Output Control

Nothing has changed for SAP GTM regarding the output control. BRF+ (Business Rule Framework plus) routines are not needed. Sample Smartforms as well as Adobe interactive forms are shipped with SAP GTM.

Profit Simulation

To use the full potential of profit simulation for double-sided as well as single sided trading contracts from release 1509 to 1809 please implement the following SAP-Notes: 2835922, 2894667, 2895597, 2895876, 2897030, 2899441, 2902730, 2916850.

There will be also a performance improvement of transaction WB29_PROFIT.

Stock Transfer Posting

With Release 1809 an action class is provided, which allows you to post stock transfers which respect the association.

If you implement SAP-Note 2882478 you can cancel stock transfers with action class CL_WB2_ACTION_GR_CANCEL. You can only cancel the document if it is not associated. Table WBIT will be updated accordingly.

Goods Receipt in Inbound Delivery

The inbound delivery can be used to integrate SAP GTM with Transportation Management (TM) using Handling Units. In such a case, you must post the goods receipt from within the inbound delivery. Please Implement the SAP-Notes 2837459, 2869894, 2921046 to be able to associate the goods receipt afterwards.

Quality Management Checks

When a trading contract is released, certain checks are done on level of the trading contract, others are done in the purchase order resp. the sales order. If a check in follow-on documents fails, the created document is rolled back.

From 1809 on the QM checks are done on level of the trading contract. You must implement the SAP-Notes 2893904 and 2900464.

Integration of International Trade

From release 2021 on the trade compliance integration is done also for Trading Contracts. Therefore, the check is only done on the level of the trading contract and not on level of its follow-on sales order resp. purchase order anymore. (More information you find in SAP Help)

Multiple Address Handling in the Sales Side of Trading Contracts using

You can define additional addresses in the Business Partner. If you create a new trading contract the systems will ask you, which of those additional addresses you want to take over in which partner role. Additional creating of business partners for this purpose is not necessary anymore.

To use this feature, you must activate certain business functions. (See SAP-Help)

How are you using SAP Global Trade Management in your organization? Please leave comments below!