As a long-term SAP user, you want to gain an overview of the master data used in the purchase to pay process. Therefore, you need to know master data used and the usage of them.
Material Master Record
The material master record is a central source of material-specific data in your company. You use the material master record in all areas of logistics.
Integrating all the material data in a single database object eliminates the problem of data redundancy. All areas, such as purchasing, inventory management, materials planning, and invoice verification, can use the stored data at the same time.
You use the data stored in the material master for many activities, including the following:
Purchasing data for ordering purposes
Inventory Management data for posting goods movement and physical inventory management
Accounting data for material valuation
Materials planning data to plan your material requirements
Several user departments within a company work with one material, and each department stores different information. Therefore, the system subdivides the data in a material master record according to each specific user department or view. Each user department has its own view of a material master record and is responsible for maintaining this data.
Material Master — Organizational Levels
The above-mentioned organizational levels are relevant for the external procurement process. Client, plant, and storage location play a role when you enter data for purchasing, inventory management, and accounting. Other organizational levels can be relevant for other departments. For example, the sales and distribution data is entered depending on the sales organization and the distribution channel, and you must specify a warehouse number and storage type for the warehouse management data.
You use the Create Material Master transaction to extend a material master record by adding missing views or organizational levels. With the Change Material transaction, you can only change the data of views and organizational levels that are already maintained.
Any changes you make to data in a material master record, such as creating or changing, are logged in a change document. This means that you can trace the change history at any time.