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Lesson 1 of 6

Trade compliance and where GTS fits

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Every company that ships across a border must answer the same questions for every order: may we do business with this party, may this product go to this country and end user, do we need a license, what do we declare to customs, and do we qualify for a lower duty under a trade agreement? Getting them wrong costs more than a delayed truck. Export violations can bring penalties, loss of export privileges and reputational damage, and an auditor will ask for the evidence that each check ran.

SAP Global Trade Services (GTS) automates these checks next to the ERP system. The current product is SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA (often shortened to GTS E4H), with releases 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025. SAP's user guide groups its functions into five areas: products and classification, compliance management, customs management, preference management and Intrastat. Release 2025 is based on SAP S/4HANA Foundation 2025.

Products and classificationTariff numbers, export control classes (for example ECCNs), license relevance
Compliance managementSanctioned party list screening, embargo checks, legal control with licenses
Customs managementImport and export declarations, transit, special procedures such as US foreign-trade zones
Preference managementSupplier declarations and preference determination for trade agreements
IntrastatEU statistical declarations (not relevant for Contoso)
The functional areas of GTS, edition for SAP HANA, as SAP's user guide lists them.
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How GTS connects to S/4HANA

GTS is a separate application that receives copies of logistics documents from feeder systems (SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP ECC). When a sales order, outbound delivery or purchase order is created in the feeder, it is transferred to GTS and replicated as a customs document. GTS runs the active checks and, if one fails, the original document in the feeder is blocked. Users can see blocked documents and the check log directly in the feeder (in SAP GUI through /SAPSLL/MENU_LEGALR3), while compliance specialists release or confirm blocks in GTS.

The feeder pattern: S/4HANA sends documents to GTS, GTS checks and blocks, and the compliance specialist decides in GTS.
The Sign-Off Table · thesignofftable.com/academy/sap-scm-203

Contoso's trade footprint

Contoso Motor Co. is a US company. Most sales are domestic, but the aftermarket business exports CMC-ALT-100 and spare parts to distributors in Canada and Mexico, and Contoso buys some components abroad (illustrative course data). The acquisition of Alternadores del Norte in Monterrey (company code 1910, joining Contoso's SAP S/4HANA system in Wave 2, planned for February 2027) adds regular cross-border flows between Detroit and Monterrey in both directions. Ingrid, Contoso's trade compliance manager, owns screening and export compliance; Lucía, the Monterrey order-to-cash key user, will own 1910's side of the process.

Contoso has run SAP GTS 11.0 (systems GD1, GQ1 and GP1, illustrative) for sanctioned party screening and US export legal control since the ECC days. GTS 11.0 left mainstream maintenance on December 31, 2025. Since then, Contoso has had no standard legal and regulatory content updates from SAP for that release, which is the risk this course addresses.

Which feeder objects reach which GTS service at Contoso: master data and orders for screening, deliveries for legal control and customs.
The Sign-Off Table · thesignofftable.com/academy/sap-scm-203

Who does what

RoleResponsibility in GTSAt Contoso
Trade compliance managerOwns screening, embargo and legal control policy; decides on true matchesIngrid
Trade compliance specialistReviews blocked partners and documents; releases false positives with reasonsIngrid's team of two
Customs specialistCreates and monitors declarations; works with brokersShared with the Detroit shipping office
Order-to-cash key userCreates orders and deliveries; sees blocks in the feederMaria (US), Lucía (Monterrey)
GTS administratorUploads SPL lists and classification content; runs screening jobsTheo's team with Basis (Sam)
Test leadBuilds compliance cases into regression; collects evidencePriya

Roles around GTS and their Contoso owners.

The split matters for testing and for segregation of duties. The person who creates the sales order must not be the person who releases its compliance block, and the administrator who uploads a list should not be able to release partners. Those rules are tested like any other control: try the forbidden action with a test user and keep the authorization failure as evidence.

What would you do?

After an S/4HANA support package, Maria notices that no sales orders have been blocked by GTS for two weeks. Before the update there were about five a week. What should Priya do first?

Key points
  • GTS E4H covers classification, compliance, customs, preference and Intrastat next to the ERP.
  • Feeder documents are replicated as customs documents; failed checks block the original document.
  • GTS 11.0 left mainstream maintenance on December 31, 2025.
  • No block is not proof of a check: test that documents reach GTS.

Check your understanding · not graded

Lesson check

  1. 1. What happens in the feeder system when a GTS check fails?

  2. 2. When did SAP GTS 11.0 leave mainstream maintenance?

  3. 3. Which feeder transaction lets users display documents blocked by GTS?

  4. 4. Why is "no blocks this week" weak evidence in testing?