Backorder Processing (BOP) is used to re-check sales orders and stock transport orders for availability.
There are many situations where this may be necessary:
For example, sales orders may not be confirmed or not confirmed as desired due to the available-to-promise (ATP) situation at a certain date. In the meantime, an MRP controller can react to the tight availability situation and schedule additional receipts. Without backorder processing, however, the confirmation of sales orders that have already been entered and checked does not change. In other words, if a sales order has already been created, the system does not automatically check whether the ATP situation has changed in order to confirm the sales order or improve the confirmation. This is the task of backorder processing.
Another reason for backorder processing is the first-come, first-served principle of availability check. Incoming requirements are checked for availability in the order in which they are entered. Confirmed requirements reduce the cumulative ATP quantity. A sales order entered later may not be confirmed, even though it has a higher priority. In backorder processing, the cumulative ATP quantity can be distributed according to priorities other than the document entry sequence (for example, according to the delivery priority of the item).
- A further reason for backorder processing is that sales orders can be confirmed based on planned receipts. If receipts are delayed, the confirmations may be unrealistic, but without backorder processing, they remain unchanged in the orders.
Backorder processing usually runs as background job and must be configured.
However, the configuration is not done in the configuration environment, but directly in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system using dedicated applications.
The main work for the implementation team is to determine which requirements will be included and re-checked by backorder processing, and which strategies will be used for each of these requirements.
First, the BOP segments must be defined. A segment consists of a definition of filters. Segments are used to select and sort sales order and stock transport order items during the BOP run. A confirmation strategy is then applied to each of the selected requirements. Think of a segment as a group of requirements (sales and stock transport orders) to which a confirmation strategy is applied during the BOP run.
A confirmation strategy defines how a requirement is handled in a BOP run. Each requirement in a BOP run is assigned to one of six possible confirmation strategies. The assigned confirmation strategy determines which requirement receives the available quantity first.
The following strategies are available:
After you have explained the possible strategies, you can start thinking and discussing with your customer about which requirements should be assigned to which strategy, that is, you can segment the requirements.
As an example, let's assume that the following segmentation results from the discussion.
Win: Sales orders from high-priority (priority 1) customers that are due in the next two days should be assigned to the Win strategy.
Gain: Sales orders from priority 1 and priority 2 customers due in the next seven days are to be assigned to the Gain strategy.
Redistribute: All other sales orders due for the next seven days are to be assigned to the Redistribute strategy.
Fill: Stock transport orders are to be assigned to the Fill strategy.
Lose: Sales orders from customers with a credit block are not to be confirmed during Backorder Processing and are, therefore, to be assigned to the Lose strategy.
Watch the following demo to learn how to create some of the segments we just defined using the Configure BOP Segment application.
If necessary, you can define sorting sequences and assign them to the segments. If the individual requirements are to be processed not only according to ascending or descending sort criteria, but also according to a specific custom logic, custom sorting sequences must be configured. The Configure Custom BOP Sorting application is available for this purpose. Watch the following demo to learn how to create sorting sequences.
Now we need to assign the segments, including sorting, to the appropriate strategies. The Configure BOP Variant application is available for this purpose.
We are done with the main steps of configuring backorder processing. When you have created a variant, you can use it to schedule a backorder processing run.
You can create as many variants as you need.
Configure Characteristics
Characteristic catalogs contain the attributes that can be used to define segments for backorder processing; for example, sold-to party number, order creation date, plant, and so on. SAP provides initial sets of characteristics.
However, the delivered set of characteristics may be too large or may not meet your customers business requirements.
Therefore, as a first step, you should typically perform the activity of selecting the required characteristics in the Manage Characteristic Catalogs application before configuring backorder processing.
By adding or removing characteristics, you can limit the number of characteristics available to business users when they create segments.
We recommend that you define the minimum set of characteristics based on the specific business requirements of your customer for segment creation and remove any characteristics that are not required.
It's also possible to pre-assign values to characteristics and create groups so that users don't have to do this every time they create a segment. It makes sense, for example, for the different groups of sold-to parties that often have to be classified by priority.
Watch the following demo to learn how to manage characteristic catalogs.