Explaining VAS

The figure illustrates the position of value added services in the process flow.

In addition to the delivery of fashion goods, a customer requires all items to be labelled with size information. Some special items are to be ticketed with a special promotion ticket.

Customers frequently request price labels, a certain kind of packing, or other special services for the fashion materials they have ordered. These special services are added to the fashion materials before they are delivered to customers. Depending on the kind of service and its complexity, you will need materials, expertise, or more personnel to provide the service. These services increase the value of fashion materials that you will finally deliver to the customer, and are referred to as value-added services (VAS).

You can map these specific customer requirements, including the costs involved in fulfilling them, as value-added services (VAS). All the information related to these services is assigned by using conditions and determined later in application documents such as sales orders, stock transport orders, and purchase orders. This way you always have information about the services your customer wants with respect to specific fashion materials, during the complete customer-order process. This information can also be added manually in the aforementioned documents in some exceptional scenarios.

During order processing, all of the necessary services specified and related information - including prices, is present in the documents. They are then transferred to the follow-on documents such as outbound delivery, inbound delivery, and so on. This is done to help the warehouse personnel carry out the special tasks needed before delivering the goods in a timely and precise manner. The additional ability to manage freely definable information fields during condition maintenance can be used to pass the necessary information to an external system such as warehouse management

VAS are stored in additional objects sales or purchase orders.

(Table FSH_VASS_TL for sales orders and table FSH_VASM_TL for purchase orders)

The following are further aspects of data in orders:

• Every item of the order can have individual services.
• The usage of VAS materials is optional. Additional items make sense if additional materials need to be included into the order because these additional materials are stock managed. For simple paper labels stock management is generally not required.
• If the VAS Material is relevant as a requirement it will be entered as a sub item line in the order and thus becomes relevant for ATP, MRP etc.
• Charge codes are used as a link to pricing.
• Text 1,2 and 3 can be used to store e.g. short instructions how to apply the special service.
• Procurement relevance can be flagged if the VAS information is to be used in sales order specific procurement.
• The long text can store a longer description (text file).

The figure illustrates the different storages, containing master data. The following list explains the required customizing activities:

VAS service types

are defined in IMG → Logistics - General → Fashion Management → Cross-Applications → Value-Added Services (VAS).

VAS condition types

are maintained in transactions FSH_VASA, FSH_VAS_SD and FSH_VAS_MM.

VAS charge codes

are defined in IMG → Logistics → General → Fashion Management → Cross-Applications → Value-Added Services (VAS) → Define Charge Codes.

VAS Material master

are created with standard material creation transactions.

Business partner enablement

is done in standard customer / vendor maintenance transactions:

• XD01 / XD02 / VD01 / VD02 Fashion Specific Data - VAS Controls - VAS Determination Mode.

• XK01 / XK02 / MK01 / MK02 Fashion Specific Data - VAS Determination Mode.

Definition of VAS customer groups

is done in IMG.

Assignment of VAS customer groups

is done in standard maintenance transaction: XD01 / XD02 / VD01 / VD02 Fashion Specific Data - VAS Controls - VAS Customer Group

VAS is determined with standard SAP condition technic. The determination procedure, condition types and access sequences are defined in IMG. The determination procedure is linked to the document type on header level in IMG.

The default VAS determination procedure has three condition types which have each an associated access sequence.

Value Added Services condition records can be created in three ways:

• for Materials,

• for sales and

• for purchasing.

The example above shows the default access sequence for sales, condition records are maintained for any of the field combination. Every condition record can have multiple value added services.

If a sales order is created for a customer of group 001 in the given sales area for the material specified this will lead to the determination of VAS sub services 10-1 and 30-1 in the sales order.

The following list explains the uses transactions and condition types:

• VAS condition maintenance specific to Material is used if the VAS is used for both sales orders and purchase orders. Transaction: FSH_VASA. Condition type: 01MG.

• VAS condition maintenance for sales orders is used if the VAS is only for sales orders. Transaction: FSH_VAS_SD. Condition type: 03SD.

• VAS condition maintenance for purchasing documents is used if the VAS is used only for purchase orders. Transaction: FSH_VAS_MM. Condition type: 02MM.

If the Value added service does not include VAS materials (VAS as information only):

• Value added services are entered during order creation either manually by the user or by determination (condition technic).
• This VAS data will be copied into the outbound delivery. It is possible to maintain VAS also in the delivery itself.
• The customer invoice can contain a special surcharge for the services.

If VAS includes VAS materials with stock keeping:

• The availability of theses VAS Materials can be checked by ATP.
• VAS materials can be ARun relevant.

VAS materials (single materials) are not relevant for segmentation or seasonality.

Re-determination of VAS is available with transaction FSH_VAS_RED.

VAS items can be flagged as "procurement relevant" in special sales orders. In this case the VAS information is copied to the purchase requisition.

In the case of PTO this means that VAS data might be copied from the PTO to the delivery but the in the warehouse there would be no additional task related to VAS because the special customer stock has already been prepared by the vendor.

In sales and purchase documents there are two options to link to VAS data.

VAS Details also allows manual entry of VAS. It can be accessed for a selected item following:

• Sales documents (VA01, VA02, VA41, VA42): Goto → Value Added Service → VAS Detail.
• Purchase order (ME21N, ME22N): Environment → Value Added Service → VAS Detail.

To display all VAS data in the document across items:

• Sales documents (VA01, VA02, VA03, VA41, VA42, VA43): Goto → Value Added Service → VAS Data in Document.
• Purchase order (ME21N, ME22N, ME23N): Environment → Value Added Service → VAS Data in Document.

Charge codes link VAS to pricing.

If a customer has to pay for the additional service this can be managed as follows:

• Define charge codes in customizing.
• Assign a charge code in the VAS condition record.
• Create a price condition type for charge codes or use the default types:

  • Condition F4AC: To calculate an absolute surcharge

  • Condition F4AB: To calculate a percentage-based surcharge

• Include this price condition in the pricing procedure.

The figure shows the three available transactions:

• Transaction FSH_VPO displays VAS data of purchase orders.

• Transaction FSH_VSO displays VAS data of sales orders.

• Transaction FSH_VDELV displays VAS of in- and outbound deliveries.

The VAS redetermination report is available to redetermine the VAS details (items and data) for multiple sales document items or purchase document items based on existing (and potentially changed) condition records.

Transaction: FSH_VAS_RED.

There is the possibility to check the redetermined data and adopt or reject the proposal in online mode

Redetermination can also be called within individual documents (sales and purchase orders) following the path:

• Sales documents (VA01, VA02, VA41, VA42): Goto → Value Added Service → VAS Redetermination.

• Purchase order (ME21N, ME22N): Environment → Value Added Service → VAS Redetermination.

You can define the delivery mode of VAS items along with the main item, by using VAS correlation. You only can use VAS correlation only when you are creating outbound delivery documents. You cannot use VAS correlation when you are changing existing delivery documents.

VAS settings for outbound deliveries are defined in IMG → Logistics Execution → Shipping → Deliveries → Define Delivery Types for Fashion Management.