In SAP Transportation Management, a fuel surcharge that varies based on a fluctuating external value like a fuel price is best implemented using an index table. The index table stores the time-dependent index values (e.g., fuel price per gallon). The charge calculation logic then references this index value on the specified calculation date to determine the surcharge amount proportionally.

To ensure the system selects the correct index table for a specific agreement between a shipper and carrier, a determination rule is necessary. This rule links the business document (like a freight order) to the appropriate freight agreement and its associated calculation sheet, which contains the charge item that uses the index table.

B. Use the rating amount or a standard rate table for the fuel surcharge.

A standard rate table is not designed for dynamically changing, index-based values and would require frequent manual updates of the rates themselves.

C. Use a rate table for the fuel surcharge with calculation date as a scale.

This is inefficient. It would require creating a new rate entry for every potential date a fuel price changes, rather than just updating the index value.

1. SAP S/4HANA Help Portal

Transportation Management

"Index Table": "You can use an index table to define a charge that is dependent on a fluctuating

time-dependent value

for example

a fuel surcharge. You can maintain the index values and their validity in the index table. The system can then use this index value to calculate the charges." This directly supports the use of an index table (Answer A).

2. SAP S/4HANA Help Portal

Transportation Management

"Rate Determination": The documentation explains that the system determines rates by finding a valid freight agreement. "The system uses the condition with the determination rule to find the agreement." This process is essential for the system to locate the correct calculation logic

including any charge items that reference an index table

thus supporting the need for a determination rule (Answer D).

3. SAP Learning Hub

Course TM110 - Freight Agreement and Order Management in SAP S/4HANA

Unit 5: Charge Calculation: This course details the configuration of charge calculation. It explicitly covers the creation and use of index tables for scenarios like fuel surcharges and the necessity of determination rules to find the correct agreement and its associated calculation sheets and rate structures.

In SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management, when a specific agreement determination condition is not used, the system falls back to a standard logic based on the data in the business document (in this case, the freight order). The freight agreement is a purchasing contract for transportation services. Therefore, the system primarily uses the Purchasing Organization, which represents the buying entity within the company, and the Carrier (Transportation Service Provider), who is the contractual partner and seller of the service, to uniquely identify the relevant freight agreement for charge calculation.

B. Ordering party: This party (e.g., a sales organization) initiates the transport requirement, but the freight agreement is a procurement document managed by the purchasing organization.

D. Executing carrier: The freight agreement is held with the contractual carrier. The executing carrier might be a subcontractor and not the direct party to the agreement being determined.

1. SAP Help Portal

SAP S/4HANA 2023

"Agreement Determination": The official documentation states

"The system uses the following data from the business document to search for freight agreements: Purchasing organization

Carrier

Service level

Transportation mode

Shipping type...". This directly confirms that the Purchasing Organization and Carrier are key determination criteria. (Path: SAP S/4HANA -> Transportation Management (TM) -> Freight Agreement Management -> Agreement Determination).

2. SAP Learning

Course S4TM1 "SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management Overview"

Unit 5

Lesson 2: "Freight Agreement Management": This courseware explains that a Freight Agreement is a contract between a shipper/LSP (represented by a purchasing organization) and a carrier. This foundational concept establishes the relationship between these two entities as central to the agreement.

3. SAP Help Portal

SAP S/4HANA 2023

"Freight Agreement": The documentation defines a freight agreement as a "grouping of calculation sheets

rate tables

and scales that you have negotiated with a carrier." This definition reinforces that the agreement is fundamentally linked to the specific carrier. (Path: SAP S/4HANA -> Transportation Management (TM) -> Freight Agreement Management -> Freight Agreement).

In the standard process flow for SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management (TM), the creation of a freight order is preceded by several key documents. An Order-based Transportation Requirement (OTR) is generated from a source business document (e.g., a sales order) to represent the transportation demand within the TM module. Subsequently, the system creates Freight Units (FUs) based on the OTR. These FUs are the fundamental, smallest plannable units. During the transportation planning phase, either manually or automatically, these freight units are assigned to a capacity document, which for road or rail transport is the freight order. Thus, both the OTR and the FU are direct predecessors in the document flow that results in a freight order.

B. Sales order: While a sales order initiates the logistics process, the direct predecessor document within the TM module is the Order-based Transportation Requirement (OTR), making it a more precise answer.

D. Shipment: A shipment is a document from the classic SAP Logistics Execution Transportation (LE-TRA) module. In an embedded TM scenario, the freight order replaces the LE-TRA shipment, it is not a predecessor.

1. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

"Freight Unit": "A freight unit is a set of goods that are transported together across the entire transportation chain... The system creates freight units from order-based transportation requirements (OTRs) or delivery-based transportation requirements (DTRs)." This establishes the OTR as a predecessor to the FU.

2. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

"Freight Order": "A freight order is a document that contains all the information required for the execution of a transportation process. During transportation planning

you create freight orders to transport the goods specified in your freight units." This confirms that freight units are the direct input for creating freight orders.

3. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

"Integration of Sales Orders (SD)": "When you save a sales order in Sales and Distribution (SD)

the system automatically creates an order-based transportation requirement (OTR) in TM based on the data in the sales order." This clarifies the relationship between the sales order and the OTR

positioning the OTR as the immediate TM-relevant predecessor.

In SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management, schedule departures can be created using two primary automated methods. First, you can perform a mass upload using the report /SCMTMS/SCHUPLOAD, which allows you to create or update schedules and their departures from a file (e.g., a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet). This is ideal for initially loading a large number of predefined departures. Second, you can generate departures based on a rule defined within the schedule master data itself. This method is used for recurring transportation services, where you specify a pattern (e.g., daily, weekly) and the system automatically creates the individual departure instances for a given period.

C. Copy from a freight booking: A freight booking is a transactional document that is often created based on a schedule (master data), not the other way around.

D. Maintain in default route: A schedule is a separate master data object that can be assigned to a default route to define the transportation service, but its departures are not maintained within the default route itself.

1. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

Transportation Management (TM)

"Schedule": "You can create schedules in the following ways: Manually

By uploading a Microsoft Excel file

By using a generation report." This source directly supports the creation via upload (A) and generation from a rule/report (B).

2. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

Transportation Management (TM)

"Creation of Schedules": This section details the process for creating schedules

including the use of report /SCMTMS/SCHUPLOAD for file uploads and the generation of departures from rules defined in the schedule header.

3. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

Transportation Management (TM)

"Default Route": This documentation describes that a schedule can be assigned to a default route's transportation lane

confirming they are separate master data objects and that schedules are not maintained within the route. This invalidates option D.

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.

In SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management, the "Automatic and Manual Planning" incompatibility area is used to define constraints for the vehicle routing and scheduling (VSR) optimizer and for manual planning. This functionality prevents the system from combining certain business objects within the same freight document.

The system supports defining an incompatibility between a vehicle resource and a location (A) to prevent a specific truck from stopping at a particular site. It also supports an incompatibility between two transportation request headers (B), such as two sales orders, to ensure their corresponding freight units are not planned on the same truck, for example, due to different customer requirements.

C. Freight unit - Freight booking: A freight booking is a result of planning a freight unit. An incompatibility is defined between objects being planned, not between the input (freight unit) and the output (freight booking).

D. Carrier - Transportation order: A carrier is assigned to a transportation order after planning is complete. Planning incompatibilities are checked during planning, for instance, between a freight unit and a potential carrier.

1. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

Transportation Management (TM) -> Incompatibilities -> Definition of Incompatibilities: This official documentation outlines the different incompatibility areas and the business object combinations (incompatibility types) available for each. It explicitly lists "Vehicle Resource and Location" and "Transportation Request Header and Transportation Request Header" as valid types for the "Automatic and Manual Planning" area.

2. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal

Transportation Management (TM) -> Master Data -> Define Incompatibility: The configuration guide details the setup for incompatibilities. In the IMG activity Define Incompatibility Types

the system provides a predefined list of object combinations for the planning area

which includes the correct answers.

If freight cost distribution is not active, SAP TM treats the freight charges as a classic MM service procurement.

When the freight settlement document (FSD) is transferred, SAP MM is called to

1) create (or extend) a freight purchase order that contains a service item for the carrier service, and

2) generate a service entry sheet that records the performed service and posts the costs to accounting.

No logistics-invoice (carrier invoice) is created at this moment; invoice verification follows later, and a Settlement Management document is only produced when the cost-distribution scenario is used.

A. Carrier invoice – MM invoices (MIRO/ERS) are posted only after the SES is accepted; the FSD transfer itself does not create them.

D. Settlement management document – This is produced when cost distribution is enabled or in SD-based settlement, not in the “cost distribution not enabled” MM flow.

1. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Help Portal → Transportation Management → Settlement → “Posting a Freight Settlement Document to MM (Cost Distribution Not Enabled)”

steps 2-3 (PO and SES creation).

2. SAP S/4HANA 2023 Integration Guide “TM-MM Integration”

section 3.2.1

pp. 18-20: “System creates purchase order … afterwards generates service entry sheet.”

3. SAP Note 2240952 (v.10) “Automatic Creation of Purchase Order and Service Entry Sheet from Freight Settlement Document”

paragraphs 2-3.

4. Hüttenhain

O. & Jakob

M. (2022). Transportation Management in SAP S/4HANA

SAP PRESS

chapter 13.2.2

pp. 455-457.

The system consumes all relevant transportation allocations by searching up the defined hierarchies for both transportation zones and means of transport. The freight order is from zone 4 to 5 with means of transport (MTr) B.

1. (E) The specific route from zone 4 to 5 is contained within the higher-level route from zone 2 (parent of 4) to zone 3 (parent of 5). The allocation for this higher-level route with the matching MTr B is consumed.

2. (C) The entire journey occurs within the geographical scope of the top-level zone 1. Therefore, the "Within" allocation for zone 1 with the matching MTr B is consumed.

3. (B) Following the same "Within" logic for zone 1, the system also searches up the MTr hierarchy. Since MTr A is the parent of MTr B, the allocation for zone 1 with MTr A is also consumed.

A. The destination zone 2 is the parent of the source, not part of the destination path (5 -> 3 -> 1), so this allocation for a different route is not consumed.

D. The means of transport C is a sibling of the freight order's MTr B. The system searches up the hierarchy (to parent A), not sideways to siblings.

1. SAP S/4HANA 2023

Product Assistance

Enterprise Business Applications -> Supply Chain -> Transportation Management (TM) -> Freight Order Management -> Transportation Allocation -> Consumption of Transportation Allocations: This section details the logic for how freight documents consume allocations. It explicitly states

"The system checks for transportation allocations at the level of the freight document and at all higher levels of the transportation zone and means of transport hierarchies."

2. SAP S/4HANA 2023

Product Assistance

... -> Transportation Management (TM) -> ... -> Transportation Allocation -> Consumption of Transportation Allocations: This document further explains the orientation logic. For "Within

" it states: "If the source location and the destination location of a freight document are in the same transportation zone of a higher-level transportation zone hierarchy

the system also consumes transportation allocations with the orientation Within for this higher-level transportation zone." This validates the consumption of allocations B and C.

3. SAP S/4HANA 2023

Product Assistance

... -> Transportation Management (TM) -> ... -> Transportation Allocation -> Consumption of Transportation Allocations: The same document explains the "Along" logic for hierarchies: "...the system consumes this transportation allocation for all freight documents for which the source location is in the source transportation zone of the higher-level hierarchy and the destination location is in the destination transportation zone of the higher-level hierarchy." This validates the consumption of allocation E.