When creating an order for a customer, you must consider transport agreements, delivery, and payment conditions, and so on, with business partners. To avoid re-entering this information each time for every activity related to these business partners, relevant data for the activity from the master record of the business partner is simply copied. In the same way, the material master record stores information. This concept is valid for processing data for each master record included in the activity.
When performing each transaction, applicable organizational elements must be assigned. Assignments to the enterprise structure in the document are generated in addition to the information stored for the customer and material.
Sales Document Structure
Sales document header
The data in the document header is valid for the entire document. This includes, for example, customer-related data.
Sales document items
Each item in the sales document contains its own data. This includes, for example, data about the material and quantities ordered. Each sales document can have several items, while individual items can be controlled differently. Examples include material item, service item, free-of-charge item, or text item.
Item schedule lines
Schedule lines contain delivery quantities and delivery dates. They belong uniquely to an item. Every item that has a subsequent outbound delivery in the sales and distribution process must have at least a schedule line. The item can have several schedule lines, for example when the quantity ordered is to be delivered in several partial deliveries at different times.
Sales Order Processing
When an order is processed, the system can run various function to accelerate and assist the order processing.
Partners
You store the partner functions for the customer master in the customer master sales area data. During sales order processing, they are copied as default values into the documents.
For sales order processing, you need the mandatory partner functions sold-to party, ship-to party, payer, and bill-to party. In the course of processing a sales order, they can differ from each other or can be identical. The functions are as follows:
Sold-to party: places the order
Ship-to party: receives goods or services
Bill-to party: receives the invoice for goods or services
Payer: is responsible for paying the invoice
Other partner functions, such as contact person or forwarding agent, are not required for sales order processing.
Partners in the Sales Process
You can maintain partner relationships both in sales documents and in the master data. Partner relationships are usually already defined in the business partner record. These are proposed automatically in the document header when you create a sales document. Providing Customizing permits it, you can change or supplement these relationships manually by going to the partner screen and changing the function assignment.
You decide whether several partners can be assigned to one partner function in the business partner record in Customizing. If multiple partners are maintained with the same function, a selection list appears containing these partners when you then enter a sales order.
In the sales documents, the system has been configured so that only one partner can be assigned to each partner function. The only exception is for outline agreements.
You can also define partners at item level in the sales documents.
You can determine which partner functions have to be entered (mandatory functions).
You can prohibit anyone from changing a partner that has already been entered (You can indicate that the sold-to party cannot be changed in the sales document for example).
It is also possible to enter or change the address of a partner such as the ship-to party manually. This change does not affect the master record.
Pricing in Sales Orders
Availability Check in the Sales Order
When you enter a sales order, you can only confirm the delivery of the goods for the required delivery date if the goods are available for all the necessary processing activities, which take place before delivery.
On the Sales and Distribution tab page in the material master you can, in Gen./Plant, in the Availability Check field, enter which or what type of availability check should be carried out for this material during order processing.
There are also various tables in Customizing, on which the availability check is also dependent.
From the availability control screen, you can access the Available to Promise (ATP) quantities, the scope of check for determining available quantity, and the other plants that may have the material available.
The material availability check in sales orders is performed at plant level for the corresponding item. The plant can be determined automatically or maintained manually. During automatic determination, the system looks for a valid default value for the plant in the relevant master data using the following sequence:
Customer-material info record
Ship-to party customer master record
Material master record
Incompletion Log
Output
Output is information that is sent to the customer via various media, such as mail, EDI, or fax. Examples include the printout of a quotation or an order confirmation, order confirmations via EDI, or invoices by fax.
As with pricing, output determination takes place using the condition technique.
Output can be sent for various sales and distribution documents (order, delivery, billing document, and so on).
