Good to see you again, folks! This time I would like to talk about the freight as an issue for the PIS/COFINS.
The ECD – PIS/COFINS file layout is divided into some greater groups, and freight nature is located in Group D, register D-101.
The layout brings lots of data related to the freight the company paid and, one data which is not present in Standard SAP: freight origin code (Indicador de Natureza de Frete). The expected data table supplied by the Government you can see below:
| Freight nature (origin) | FNC |
| Sales operations, freight expenses on the Vendor | 0 |
| Sales operations, freight expenses on the Customer | 1 |
| Purchase operations, of goods for re-sale, raw material and other credit generators | 2 |
| Purchase operations, of goods for re-sale, raw material and other non-credit generators | 3 |
| Finished goods transfer among the plants of the company | 4 |
| Unfinished goods transfer among the plants of the company | 5 |
| Others. | 9 |
There are some possibilities of solving this issue (BADi change, exits, z_tables…) but I want to focus on INCOTERMS for now. This is more appropriate for those clients where, extra developments or changes to the template are a log and complex way ahead.
A little bit of explanation. INCOTERMS, as the name says, are international commercial codes for sales between companies in different countries. Also divided into groups (C, D, E and F), and recently updated (as of 2011), they mainly indicate the sharing of transportation costs (freight) and responsibility between parts. So, to solve the gap of freight above, it was decided to create “new” INCOTERMS, which would represent the situations contained in the Government table. As an example, the new codes would be:
| New INCOTERM | Description | FNC |
| ZSA | Sales operations, freight expenses on the Vendor | 0 |
| ZSB | Sales operations, freight expenses on the Customer | 1 |
| ZSC | Purchase operations, of goods for re-sale, raw material and other credit generators | 2 |
| ZSD | Purchase operations, of goods for re-sale, raw material and other non-credit generators | 3 |
| ZSE | Finished goods transfer among the plants of the company | 4 |
| ZSF | Unfinished goods transfer among the plants of the company | 5 |
| ZSG | Others. | 9 |
Legend: FNC à freight nature code (Government)
With the new INCOTERMS present in the system and known by the users, it’s just a matter of adjusting the extraction programs (or any other point you wish) or interfaces between SAP and the legacy, so that the extracted file receive the freight origin code (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9).
This is a feasible solution and was welcomed by some MM consultants I have talked to. I hope it will be useful for you, too. Feel free to use!
