Assortment List

The assortment list provides an overview of the listed assortment, which a store could order and sell at the point of sale within the validity period of the assortment list. The assortment list keeps the store or customer (assortment user) informed of any changes in the assortment (new or discontinued articles, price changes, promotion articles, and so on).

Assortment lists can be configured according to the particular requirements of an assortment, for example for the perishables assortment, the vendor information should be included for each article, but not for the jewelry assortment. The assortment lists can be prepared in different media (in print format, or as an electronic message sent to a store retailing system).

Assortment List Versions:

• Full Version

  This version contains all relevant articles within the validity period of the assortment list.

• Change Version

  This version contains only those articles that have been changed since the last message was created. These changes must be relevant during the validity period of that assortment list version.

• Mixed Version

  This version contains the last full version with all the subsequent changes and therefore shows the current status. If an article occurs in several change versions, only the most recent data will be included. This means that a current version can be printed out at any time.

The version management provides an overview of the versions that have been created, together with their validity periods, and a display of the assortment list on the screen.

Assortment list performance considerations:

Normally, the initial version is a full version of the assortment list. For performance reasons, all later versions are mixed versions as a rule.

For a new store, the assortment list has to be initialized. The initialization creates the first full version for the store, and activates the change pointers, so that for any changes which are relevant for a store/article, the system creates a change pointer which is analyzed during the creation of change versions then. If the new store’s POS system already has all the article data (for example, the assortment list IDocs were copied from another store), then you can run a dummy initialization: This means, the change pointer creation is activated, but no full version is generated, which saves system time. Amongst others, transaction WPER2 can be used for the dummy initialization. Consider this if the exact same data has to be loaded to several store’s systems (for example, when they have the same assortment and pricing assignments). With the dummy initialization, you can find the IDoc segment number of a specific article in a large IDoc with many articles.

The assortment list contains selected data of the article maintenance, which is relevant for the assortment user (store or customer). The relevant articles are those which can be ordered by the store and sold at the store’s point of sale (POS) system.

The listing period of an article determines the timeframe in which it can be ordered, and the sales period, which may differ from the listing period, can be used to determine how long an article will be included in the store’s assortment list (even after the listing period may have ended), if it’s used to feed the store’s POS system. Therefore, the flag sales usage can be set in assortment list customizing.

The available supply sources can be determined for the articles, so that the store knows with whom to place orders. This is relevant, if the articles, or a part of the assortment, may actually be ordered by the stores. When articles are only ordered centrally, for example by automatic replenishment, the supply source information in the assortment list may not be necessary.

Transactional data could also be read here (promotion, allocation tables, purchase orders). This data may support the requirements planning of a store, for example. However, the evaluation of this data has a significant effect on performance. Usually, such data is provided to stores by means of other (online) standard reports.

Store layout information is available for creating shelf-edge labels, for article placements, and for planning by visual inspection of the shelves.

For each assortment list type, you configure the cycle control for the preparation of assortment lists.

The cycle control includes:

• The number of days lead time for generating the assortment list

• The cycle for generating change versions (number of days validity period of the version)

• The number of change versions until a full version of the assortment list will be created again

Every article is assigned one assortment list type. Note: An assortment list type must be assigned to an article if the article is to appear in the assortment list.

It is recommended to create just a few assortment list types. Just as an example, these could be set up in line with the article types you are using.

For each assortment list type, you can configure the control of the logistics quantities. Here, you can determine which transaction data (for example, previous purchase orders) should be read for an assortment list. When using this function, you have to make sure to also maintain either a number of documents (e.g. last 3 purchase orders) or the timeframe (purchase orders of the last two weeks) to limit the selection scope. This prevents the system from reading documents that are too old. Anyhow, as mentioned earlier, you may use standard reports instead.

In the assortment list profile, you configure the control parameters for generating assortment lists. This is done in connection with an assortment list type. In that way, a store can receive different assortment lists for the different areas of their assortments.

Each site is assigned one assortment list profile. One assortment list profile can be used for many sites. Note: Without an assortment list profile, no assortment list can be generated for the site.

The assortment list profile parameters control the generation and the appearance of assortment lists. With these parameters, you can determine the following:

• Whether IDocs are created for electronic distribution

• Whether the data is stored in the assortment list version management

• How the articles are sorted. Sorting by vendor (sorting procedure 3 or 4), along with the vendor info flag, is necessary if you want to include all possible supply sources for an article in the assortment list.

• Which data segments are created for each article

• How the assortment list line items should be structured

• If articles should be included in the assortment list for the sales period (that is, after the listing period is finished). This is usually the case when the assortment list is used to update the store’s point of sale (POS) system.