Getting Started with SAP Global Trade Services (GTS): A Beginner’s Learning Roadmap

1. Who Is Your Author

My name is Lucas, and I’ve been working with SAP GTS for the last 12 years. I started using it at the beginning of my career, straight after graduation. I was hired as a Deputy Business Process Owner, and although I had a good functional background of Customs and Compliance processes, I had never used SAP before, so the challenge was real. 

Fortunately for me, I was given time to understand SAP GTS and train myself in SAP MM and SAP SD. With some support from a SAP SD consultant who worked in my SAP Project Team, I progressed and learnt how to use and understand SAP GTS as a part of the SAP Suite. 

I also understand that today time is a rare luxury, so I wrote this article to help anyone who would like to get in touch with SAP GTS from scratch.

2. What is SAP GTS?

If you’ve never heard of SAP GTS before, or if the sound of its name gives you shivers, here below is the easiest way to describe its use: 

• When a Company ships goods across a border, there are laws, rules, and restrictions to comply with: 
  • customs declarations, export controls, sanctions checks, trade agreements, it’s a lot.

SAP Global Trade Services (GTS) is the SAP solution that can centralize and automate all of those processes in one place.

For example, once I started working, rather than having me or the other compliance team members manually checking every shipment against the set of rules or even requesting the Logistics Clerks filling out Export customs Declarations by hand, SAP GTS was plugged into the existing SAP system (at that time the suite was SAP ECC R3 and SAP GTS 11.0 versions) and handled or flagged what needed human attention. 

GTS is built around three core pillars:

Important to know: GTS does not work standalone. It connects to your SAP ERP system (ECC or S/4HANA) as a Compliance hub.

Depending on your configuration, each and/or every transaction documents (like sales orders or deliveries) in ERP trigger compliance checks in GTS automatically.

3. What You Should Know Before Starting

As you may already know from chatting with your colleagues, SAP GTS is not the easiest SAP module to jump into cold.

It sits at the intersection of two complex worlds: 

• SAP technical knowledge and international trade law. 

The good news is that you don’t need to be an expert in either; we all must start from somewhere, but having some grounding in both will save you a lot of frustration. 

Here’s what’s genuinely helpful to have before you dive in: 

• Basic SAP navigation:  Being comfortable with transaction codes (T-codes), the SAP menu structure, and the concept of roles and authorisations. You’ll be clicking around a lot. 

• Logistics basics:  Understanding what a sales order, purchase order, delivery, or goods movement is in SAP.

Again, you must understand that GTS is triggered by these documents (when saved), so knowing how to find the document that triggered your GTS process matters.

• SAP MM and/or SD:  Materials Management and Sales & Distribution are the modules most tightly linked to GTS. Even a basic understanding of one of them will make the integration model much clearer.

• International trade concepts:  What is an HS code (harmonised system code)? What are Incoterms? What does a customs declaration contain? You don’t need to be a customs broker, but these concepts come up constantly.

Many GTS learners build trade knowledge and SAP knowledge in parallel. Obviously there are more suitable management background to dive into GTS, but as long as you are eager to learn, nothing is impossible.

4.  A Suggested Learning Roadmap

There’s no single “right” way to learn GTS, but the following path tends to work well for beginners. Think of it as moving from understanding to exploring, to doing. 

Step 1 – Get the big picture first (1-2 weeks)

Before you open any SAP system, spend some time understanding why GTS exists. 

Read about international trade compliance, especially from your personal localization. For example, Informative Monitoring of the latest news in Europe.

More specifically, start to know what the official documents look like. You are going to validate the PDF generated by SAP GTS, so having a look at what a Customs Declaration should look like might be a good point.

Finally, start to understand how SAP positions GTS within its solution portfolio. The SAP Help Portal introduction pages are a good starting point. This context will make everything else click faster.

A useful framing exercise: Pick a real-world scenario (e.g., a European company exporting electronics to the US) and trace every compliance and customs step it would have to go through.

• Make a chart: From the 1st step (Order Acknowledgement) to the last (Import Customs Clearance) 

• Then ask: which of those steps would GTS handle?

Step 2 – Take a structured SAP course

Once you have the conceptual grounding, structured training is the most efficient way to learn the system properly. SAP’s official courses are thorough and well-organised. These are the core ones to look for:

Check whether your company already has an SAP Learning Hub license. If they do, you can access the eLearning versions of most of these courses for free. 

Step 3 – Get hands-on with a system 

Reading and watching will only take you so far. I would suggest – if you have the possibility – to play around in SAP GTS (Quality or PreProd systems) as much as possible. Because at some point, you need to click around in GTS yourself. The best way to do this: 

• Ask your employer for Sandbox/Quality access:  Most companies with SAP have a development or quality system you can practice in without affecting anything real.

• Use SAP Learning Journeys:  Learning.sap.com includes some guided exercises with simulated environments – useful if you don’t have a system available.

• Focus on one end-to-end scenario.  For example: configure a sanctioned party list, create a business partner, run a compliance check, and read the log. Doing one complete flow is worth more than clicking through ten half-finished ones.

5.  Where to Learn – Resources Worth Bookmarking

When I encountered SAP GTS, there was no Agentic AI tool. Obviously, today you can ask any Generative AI to explain the basis and implications of GTS. But you can also find useful resources online. Here’s what’s useful, sorted by type: 

Official SAP sources – always start here 

These are authoritative, kept up to date, and free to access (most of them): 

• SAP Help Portal – GTS – The official documentation. Dense, but comprehensive. Great for looking up specific features or configuration steps.

• SAP Learning (learning.sap.com) – Free introductory eLearning paths and paid deep-dive courses. The place to go for structured learning. 

• SAP Community – GTS discussions – Practitioners share real-world problems and solutions here. If you’re stuck on something, search here before raising a ticket. 

• SAP Notes & KBAs (support.sap.com) – Technical fixes, known bugs, and how-to notes. Requires an S-user login – your company’s SAP admin can provide one. 

Community & third-party – for a different angle 

Sometimes the official docs are too abstract. These sources offer a more practical, human perspective:

• YouTube – search ‘SAP GTS tutorial’ – Several consultants have recorded walkthroughs of SPL screening, customs setup, and customizing. Uneven quality, but worth browsing.

• Udemy – SAP GTS courses – Affordable video courses with screen recordings. Always check the reviews and how recently the course was updated before buying.

• LinkedIn Learning – Mostly overview-level content, but useful for trade compliance concepts and soft introductions to the module.

6.  Honest Tips From the Trenches

A few things that tend to trip up GTS beginners, and how to handle them: 

• Start with Compliance Management (SPL screening).  It’s the most concrete, most-used pillar and gives you fast, visible results. Starting with Preference Management – while important – can be overwhelming early on.

• Learn the feeder system model early.  GTS doesn’t work in isolation. Understanding how your SAP ERP sends documents to GTS (and what can go wrong) will save you enormous debugging time later.

• Don’t underestimate the legal side.  GTS is as much about trade law as it is about software. HS codes, Incoterms, preferential origins, and embargo regulations are not just background noise – they directly affect how you configure the system.

• Keep a customization cheat sheet.  The SPRO configuration paths in GTS are long, deeply nested, and not intuitive. Write down the paths you use most often. It will save a lot of time in the future.

• Engage with the SAP Community.  GTS has a smaller community than modules like FI or MM, so experienced consultants are often willing to engage with genuine questions. Don’t be shy.

• Be patient with yourself.  GTS is genuinely complex. It takes time to connect all the dots between the legal framework, the business process, and the technical configuration. That’s normal.

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Interested in SAP Global Trade Services or looking for expert SAP consulting? Contact our team to learn how we can help optimize your global trade and compliance processes.