Maintaining Purchasing Info Record

A purchasing info record contains information specific to a material and the supplier providing the material.

It holds information such as the price charged by the supplier, their standard order quantity, and tolerances for over-delivery and under-delivery. It is used in the purchase order transaction.

The information is specific to a particular purchasing unit (known as purchasing organization) and specific site (known as a plant) within your organization.

The purchasing info record category of a purchasing info record decides for which process the data is used. When you create an info record, you can select one of the following info categories:

• Standard

• Subcontracting

• Consignment

• Pipeline

You have various options for creating a purchasing info record:

• Manual creation of an info record

• Automatic creation via info update indicator

You can manually create or change an info record using Manage Purchasing Info Records SAP Fiori app or Create Purchasing Info Record app. When creating a purchasing info record, in the header data, you maintain the supplier, the material, the organizational data (purchasing organization and purchasing group and optionally plant), and the purchasing info record category. You need to maintain purchasing data, delivery and quantity, such as planned delivery time, amount and the conditions.

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

The type of purchasing document determines which updates are triggered by the Info update indicator.

From a quotation, the conditions, document number, 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 numbers are updated as the last document.

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

Conditions are agreements with suppliers about prices, surcharges and discounts or freight costs. Conditions can be maintained when entering quotations, purchasing info records, contracts, scheduling agreements, and purchase orders. You can also store general conditions at the supplier level, for example. The system then uses these conditions for price determination.

On the basis of the conditions, the net or effective price is calculated in a purchasing document. The following definitions apply:

• Gross price: Price without taking any possible discounts and surcharges into account.
• Net price: Price taking any applicable discounts and surcharges into account.
• Effective price: Net price minus cash discount, and plus neutral provisions, delivery costs and non-deductible taxes.

There are conditions that are valid for a certain period and conditions for which no definite validity period can be specified. In the latter case, the validity of the conditions corresponds with that of the purchasing document in question.

For time-dependent conditions, you can create price scales and map the dependency of the price on the quantity, for example.

Conditions in info records, contracts, and general conditions are time-dependent conditions. However, conditions in purchase orders are always time-independent conditions.

You use the document type to control whether time-dependent conditions are available for quotations and scheduling agreements. In Customizing, you need to set the Time-dependent conditions indicator for the particular document type.

You can define both time-dependent and time-independent conditions at header and item levels. Header conditions apply to all items in the document. However, item conditions apply only to the respective item.

The different price factors such as gross price, discounts, freight costs, customs, and taxes are mapped using condition types. The condition type determines how the price factor is calculated. You can choose between absolute, percentage, or quantity-dependent. The condition type is also used to define the reference magnitude for scales. The scale can refer to the quantity, the item value, or the weight.

An access sequence can be assigned to a condition type. The access sequence is a search strategy used to define the sequence in which condition records for a condition type are read.

The condition types that play a role in price determination are grouped together in a calculation schema. The calculation schema provides a framework for price determination. It determines the sequence in which the condition types are considered and are therefore included in the net or effective price calculation.

Furthermore, the calculation schema determines the following:

• The subtotals

  Note

  For time-dependent conditions, no subtotals are formed (net price, effective price).

• The extent to which manual processing of price determination is possible

• The basis (reference level) on which the system calculates surcharges and discounts in percentages

• The prerequisites that must be filled so that a condition type is taken into consideration

You can define different calculation schemes (for example, for individual purchasing organizations or suppliers).