The Freight Unit (FU) is the fundamental business object in SAP Transportation Management that represents the goods to be transported. It is created from an order-based transportation requirement (e.g., a sales order) and persists throughout the entire transportation chain. In a multi-stage journey, the same Freight Unit is assigned to sequential execution documents like Freight Orders or Freight Bookings, each representing a single transportation stage. By tracking the Freight Unit, you can trace the complete end-to-end journey of the goods across all these different stages, from the initial pickup to the final delivery.

A. Freight booking: A freight booking is an execution document representing a contract with a carrier for a single stage of transport, typically for sea or air freight.

C. Consignment order: This is a sales and distribution document that can trigger a transportation requirement, but it is not the SAP TM object used for tracking the physical movement across stages.

D. Freight order: A freight order is an execution document for a single transportation stage, usually for land transport (road or rail), not the entire multi-stage journey.

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1. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

"Freight Unit": "A freight unit is the smallest unit of freight that can be transported. A freight unit is a set of goods that are transported together across the entire transportation chain... The system uses freight units as the basis for transportation planning." This confirms the FU's role across the entire chain.

2. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

"Freight Order": "A freight order is an order in the transportation process that is sent to a carrier and forms the basis of the transportation charges." This defines it as a document for a specific carrier service (a single stage).

3. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

"Processing of a Multistage Transportation Process": This section describes how freight units are planned into a sequence of freight orders or freight bookings. It states

"The system creates a freight order for the pre-carriage

a freight booking for the main carriage

and a freight order for the on-carriage. The freight unit is the common object across all these documents." This explicitly details the FU's role in linking multiple stages.