Executing the Sales and Distribution Process

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to apply the sales process in SAP S/4HANA Sales

The Sales Process and Sales Documents

Before we dive deeper into customization topics, recap how the sales process in SAP S/4HANA works from a business user point of view. The figure below illustrates the sales process in SAP S/4HANA Sales including presales, sales, shipping, and billing processes. You can also see the interfaces to other SAP products such as SAP Finance.

Every sales activity that a business user undertakes in the SAP system is recorded with a sales document. For example, a sales document such as a standard order (OR) is created during sales order processing.

Figure illustrates the sales process in SAP S/4HANA Sales including presales, sales, shipping, and billing processes

You can represent each business process in sales, shipping, and billing with specifically-designed document types:

  • Sales document types: For example, inquiries, quotations, standard orders
  • Delivery document types: For example, outbound delivery, returns delivery
  • Billing document types : For example, invoices, credit memos, debit memos

Each document is identified with a unique document number and assigned an overall status reflecting its processing status. The overall status depends on the different status values in the document. These different values reflect the processing status for the different steps of the sales activity. Match codes help you search for documents.

Explore the structure of a sales document in the figure below.

The figure explores the structure of a sales document
  1. Each sales document includes a document header. The document header contains general data and default values that are valid for the whole document.

  2. The document includes as many items as required. The document items contain data about the goods and services ordered by the customer. This includes material numbers, descriptions, prices, and terms of delivery and payment.

  3. Data for shipping and procurement is located in schedule lines. Each item, in turn, contains as many schedule lines as needed. As the delivery deadline and order quantity are found in schedule lines, each line item with delivery requirements must contain at least one schedule line.

How to Apply the Sales Process

In the following simulation you can recap how to apply the sales process in SAP S/4HANA.

Note

If you have access to the SAP practice system, you can now do the exercise Apply the Sales Process.

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