Working With Purchasing Info Records

Possible sources of supply include:

Purchasing info record: The purchasing information record, commonly referred to as the info record, is a key component of the purchasing department's master data. It provides details about the relationship between a material and its vendor or a material group and its supplier. The conditions within the info record are managed either at the purchasing organization level or at the purchasing organization/plant level. Additionally, the info record stores conditions and other relevant data.

Outline agreement item: An outline purchase agreement is a long-term arrangement between a purchasing organization and a supplier, governing the supply of materials or the provision of services under pre-established conditions. These terms are valid for a specified duration and are based on either a predefined total purchase quantity or a total purchase value. There are two types of outline agreements: contracts and scheduling agreements.

Plant: External procurement can be carried out through stock transfer from another plant. No special data needs to be maintained in Purchasing, because internal settlement typically occurs. Alternatively, plants can also be set up as suppliers. To enable this, a plant assignment must be specified when maintaining the business partner under the additional general data section.

The purchasing info record is part of the purchasing department's master data. It contains supplier-specific data about a particular material or material group. When you create an info record, data from the material master and business partner master data is applied as default values. If the info record is generated automatically using the InfoUpdate indicator, additional data from the respective document, such as conditions from the quotation or the document number of the purchase order, is transferred to the info record. The data stored in the info record is used as default values in documents such as purchase orders.

You can manually create or change an info record for a purchasing organization or for a plant.

On the initial screen, enter a vendor, a material, and the organizational levels you require (purchasing organization or purchasing organization plus plant). On the following data screens, enter the necessary data manually, such as planned delivery time, gross price, and conditions.

Purchasing info records can also be created or updated automatically by selecting the Info Update indicator a purchasing document (purchase order, outline agreement, or quotation) is maintained.

The type of purchasing document determines which updates are triggered by the Info update indicator. From a quotation, conditions and the document and item number are transferred to the info record.

From a purchase order, a contract release order, or a scheduling agreement, the document and item number are updated as the last document.

For the contract, it is important to know whether an info record already exists for the vendor-material combination. When you create or change a contract, if no info record exists for the combination of vendor, material, and organizational level, the system creates an info record with the conditions from the contract. If an info record already exists, there are no updates in the info record.

An info record contains quotation and purchase order details, along with material-specific and supplier-specific information. Data in the info record, such as price or planned delivery time, is used as default values for purchase orders.

If the info record contains only purchasing organization-level data, default data is used for purchasing documents across all plants in the organization. However, if plant-specific data exists, it is applied only when a purchase order is created for that specific plant.

The system always suggests the current valid conditions from the info record. You can use the pricing date category to find other conditions, such as those valid on the delivery date.

The net price in the info record and the net price in the purchase order are two different prices. The net price of an item in the info record is based on the conditions stipulated in the info record. If you change the conditions, the net price in the info record is recalculated and the pricing date adjusted accordingly. In contrast, the price in the purchase order may reflect the deduction of a quantity discount according to a price/quantity scale.

As a rule, the conditions from the info record are adopted in the PO. However, if a price/quantity scale has been defined, the price for the relevant order quantity is used.