Businesses are required to know the country of origin (COO) for products being traded across borders. A possible way to get this information is to capture the COO as a characteristic using batch management and to see the value of the COO populated in the delivery note. Learn 5 key steps to capture the COO with batch management, maintain a COO as a characteristic, and fetch the COO through delivery documents in the sales and purchasing process using batch management.

Learning Objectives

By reading this article you will learn how to:

• Create a class and characteristics
• Create a batch
• Set up batch management for outbound (goods issue) and inbound (goods receipt) processes
• Capture a characteristic value through batch management

Key Concept

A batch is a sub-quantity of the material representing one homogenous non-reproducible unit with unique specifications. Batch is represented using a unique batch number. Batch management incorporates the entire logistics process from procurement to sales.

Being able to identify the country of origin (COO) for multi-sourced products is necessary for teams involved in global trade or foreign trade. This process can be managed within an SAP ERP system using batch management. The COO can be maintained as a characteristic as part of the batch creation per product. The COO value is picked up from the master data during batch determination and it can be captured in the delivery note.

Note
Batch management is linked with classification, but can be used without classification, too. You can create several classes for each of the applications that require specific characteristic values in a batch. These class grouping could be for finished goods specifications, inspection of products, process order results recording, inspection results recording, or storage conditions in a warehouse. You assign these classes to the material master. When the batch is created for the material, the class assignment makes it possible for the classification data to be available for batch management. The characteristics for materials managed in batches provide information for any kind of evaluations on particular attributes of batches, whether in connection with quality issues, production issues, or complaints. We make use of this batch management functionality to capture the COO of the material.

You maintain the COO for the product in the material master. From the material master the COO is populated during batch management and maintained as a mandatory characteristic. After the COO is captured during batch management, it can be seen in the delivery document. The information in the delivery document can be transferred to an invoice document and can also be used for reporting requirements for trade purposes.

To capture COO using batch management, you need to complete five steps:

1. Activate batch management
2. Activate the material for batch management
3. Create a custom class and characteristics
4. Maintain the COO in the material master
5. Create the batchFor the full article, contact us at info@kryptinc.com

To know more: Read “The importance of knowing products country of origin”