Wednesday, May 25, 2011

MRP

Material requirements planning (MRP) is a production planning and inventory control system used to manage manufacturing as well as procurement processes. The basic function of MRP system includes inventory control, bill of material processing and elementary scheduling. MRP helps organizations to maintain low inventory levels. It is used to plan manufacturing, purchasing and delivering activities. The MRP system will determine how much would be purchased or procured at a particular time considering the requirements of the organization.

Determination rules (2)

Determining the Item Category
In SAP, the system determines the item category based on:
Ø  The sales document type,
Ø  The item category group,
Ø  Higher level item and
Ø  Item usage.
An item category group is defined in the material master record. Determining the item category for sub-items depends on the higher-level item.
Determining the Schedule Line Category
The system will determine schedule line category depends on the item category of the corresponding item and the material requirements planning type (MRP) of the material. You can specify the MRP type of a material in the material master record.
If this search didn’t determined any schedule line then the system will determine one depend upon the item category without considering the MRP Type.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Determination rules 2

Determining the Item Category
In SAP, the system determines the item category based on:
Ø  The sales document type,
Ø  The item category group,
Ø  Higher level item and
Ø  Item usage.
An item category group is defined in the material master record. Determining the item category for sub-items depends on the higher-level item.
Determining the Schedule Line Category
The system will determine schedule line category depends on the item category of the corresponding item and the material requirements planning type (MRP) of the material. You can specify the MRP type of a material in the material master record.
If this search didn’t determined any schedule line then the system will determine one depend upon the item category without considering the MRP Type.

Sales document structure

The sales order contains data at three leavels that are: Header, Item and schedule line. The Header data in the document is valid for the entire document such as: customer-related data, business data, purchase order data and header condition data etc…. Item data in a sales document contains data about the individual items such as: Data about the material and quantities ordered. You can create a sales document containing several items with different Item data which allow the processing of individual items differently. Examples include material item, service item, free-of-charge item or text item. Schedule lines contain delivery quantities and delivery dates. Each schedule line in a sales document is uniquely belongs to an item. If an item requires any subsequent processing in the sales and distribution chain, then it must have at least one schedule line. The item can have several schedule lines, for example when the quantity ordered is to be delivered in several partial deliveries at different times or if an order item can not be confirmed on the requested delivery date then the system will create two schedule line one with zero quantities on the requested delivery date and another with confirmed quantity and date.

Main tips to remember

n Customizing for sales documents can be done at 3 levels,
 Header, Item and Schedule line level.
n The instruments for controlling the sales document are:
Sales document type, Item category and Schedule line category.
n The 2 thinks that we need to take care while customizing a sales document:
1)      You need to make settings in Customizing so that the item and schedule line categories are determined automatically in the sales document.
2)      You need to configure the system for forwarding data from the sales document to subsequent documents according to your needs. You can do this in copying control.
nYou change the current sales document type during document processing?
nYou can limit the validity of your sales document types for a sales area



Schedule line category


Ø Schedule lines contain all the delivery related information such as: delivery dates and quantities as well as information about the requirements transfer and inventory management.

Ø If you want to deliver an order item then it must have  at least one schedule line with confirmed delivery quantity.

Ø In Customizing for item categories, you decide if you will allow schedule lines for the item.

Ø You must activate the relevant to delivery indicator if you want the goods to be physically delivered.

Ø In the schedule line category you set the movement type

Ø You can deactivate requirements transfer and availability checks at the schedule line level.

Ø In schedule line category you can configure the purchase order type and account assignment categories in the purchase order

Ø Basic function such as incompleteness procedure

Schedule lines in different sales documents


Quotation

Ø Schedule lines in quotations are not relevant for delivery.
Ø The requirements transfer is inactive in the schedule line category.
Ø  No Goods movement type

Order

Ø Schedule line in a order is relevant to delivery
Ø The requirements transfer is active in the schedule line category.
Ø Movement type is 601

Return order

Ø Schedule line in return is relevant for delivery.
Ø Transferring requirements is inactive
Ø Movement type 651(Enables you to make sure that goods receipt goes to blocked stock returns)


Inquiry

Ø Schedule line in inquiry is used only for information.
Ø No availability check or requirement transfer
Ø No movement type
Ø Not relevant for delivery

Control Elements in Item Categories

In a sales document type, different item categories are controlled in different ways For example, the functions of a standard item are completely different from those of a free-of-charge item or a text item. The control settings available in an item category are listed below:
  • Whether the item is relevant for pricing or not?
  • Completion rule for the item (When should an item be regarded as completed?)
  • Does the item refer to a material or a text or a return item?
  • Whether schedule line is allowed for the item or not?
  • Whether business data in the item can be different to that of the document header
  • Whether the system needs to show a message if the item cannot be fully delivered?
  • Whether the item is relevant for delivery or not?
  • Should the weight and the volume of an item be determined?
  • Whether the item is relevant for billing or not?
  • Is it a statistical item? The system prices statistical items, but they are not added to the value of the order.
  • Should a billing block be set automatically for an item? m
  • Controls related to BOM explosion
Like in sales document type in item category also you need to assign some basic functions such as:
  • Partner determination
  • Incompleteness
  • Text determination etc….


Monday, May 23, 2011

Sales Document Types

You can control a sales document in customizing the sales document type. You can do these settings in the IMG screen. the menu path for definning the sales document type is :
IMG-->Sales and Distribution-->Sales-->Sales documents-->Sales document Header--> Define Sales document

The different control options in the sales documnt type is:
  • Whether the reference of a preceding document is mandatory or not?
  • Controls regarding the number range and item number increment
  • From which number range should the document number for internal or external number assignment come?
  • Whether the number range come from internally by the system or we need to enter it externally?
  • Checks regarding Division, contract, open quotation and customer material info record
  • Controls regarding credit limit check
  • Which fields are relevant for the incompletion log?
  • Delivery document type
  • Shipping condition
  • Controls regarding the delivery block
  • Whether the goods need to be delivered immediately or not?
  • Billing type (Delivery related billing type and order related billing type)
  • Controls regarding the billing block
  • Availability related controls,
  • Control regarding the delivery date (whether the system need to propose a delivery date or not? if yes then how far it is in the future?).
Apart from these settings we also need to assign some basic functions to a sales document type like:
·         Partner determination
·         Material determination
·         Partner determination
·         Output determination
·         Free goods determination
·         Pricing determination
·         Delivery and transportation scheduling
·         Credit management
·         Incompleteness
·         Material listing and material exclusion procedures

Determination rules 1

Automatic determination of Plant, Shipping point and Route in a sales document

Determining delivering plant
During order processing, the SAP R/3 system tries to determine the delivering plant for each item from the master data. The following is the search strategy.
Ÿ First, the system checks whether any plant has been specified in the customer-material info record.
Ÿ If nothing has found then the system checks whether anything has been established in the customer master record for the ship-to party.
Ÿ Finally the system checks whether anything has been established in the material master record.
The automatically determined plant can be changed manually.
Determining shipping point
The SAP R/3 system determine the shipping point for each item considering the following data’s
*   Shipping condition from the sold-to party
*   Loading group from the material master
*   Delivering plant
Determining route
The SAP system route determination is carried out depends upon:
*   The departure zone maintained in Customizing for the shipping point
*   The shipping conditions specified in the master data for the sold-to party(sales and distribution data tab)
*   The transportation zone in the sales and distribution-specific data for the material
*   The transportation zone in the ship-to party general data view
The automatically determined route can be changed manually. You can redetermine the route in the outbound delivery based on the weight group.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Different Sales Document Types

Different sales document types available in the SAP system to represent the different business processes are:  
1)      Pre-sale Phase
IN – Inquiry
QT – Quotation
2)      Outline Agreement
QC – Quantity Contract
DS – Scheduling Agreement
QP – Rental Contract
WK1 – General Value Contract
3)      Sales Phase
OR – Standard Order
RO – Rush Order
CS – Cash Sales
CF – Consignmaent Fll-up
FD – Delivery Free of Charge
4)      Complaints
RE – Returns
CR – Credit memo Request
DR – Debit memo Request
SDF – Subsequant Free of charge Delivery

Sales order

A sales order is an electronic document that incorporates the customer's request for goods or services. It contains all information to process the customer's request during sales order processing such as: Information regarding shipping, delivery requirements and date, billing, pricing etc…. Each sales order is created in a specific sales area for a Sold-To-Party customer. You can create a sales order with reference to a contract, inquiry quotation, scheduling agreement or any other sales document type. You can also create a sales order without reference to any of the above mentioned documents.
 

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Sales process flow

Sales Order process in SAP SD 

The sales and distribution process in SAP begins with establishing and maintaining customer relationships, and ends with invoicing for delivery of goods or service provided to the customer. The Customer Order Management cycle can begin with Pre-Sales Activities. The different sales promotional activities are direct mailing campaigns, internet campaigns, trade fair sales activities and telephone campaigns etc…. During Pre-sales activities as a response to your promotional activities you will receive inquiries from customer and in turn you will create and send a quotation to the customers.  As part of sales order processing, you create a sales order. During procurement, the SAP System determines the supplier and the availability of the goods, based on data that you have stored in the system. During shipping processing, you organize and perform the delivery of goods. The different sub-processes in shipping include, Picking(Optional), Packing(Optional), Shipment scheduling(Optional) and Post goods issue(Mandatory). Finally during billing, you create the invoice and transfer all the necessary data into Accounting. As part of handling payments, you check open items and post incoming payments.