Outlining Scheduling Agreements in Procurement

The Scheduling Agreements in Procurement (‏BMR‏) scope item belongs to the Operational Procurement business area, which is part of the Sourcing and Procurement line of business.

This scope item supports the scheduling agreement in the procurement process.

The use of scheduling agreements can shorten processing times and reduce the amount of paperwork you are faced with. One delivery schedule can replace many discrete purchase orders or contract release orders. Delivery of the total quantity of materials specified in a scheduling agreement item is spread over a certain period in a delivery schedule, consisting of lines indicating the individual quantities with their corresponding planned delivery dates. Inventories can be reduced to a minimum. You can perform your manufacturing operations on the Just-in-Time (JIT) principle. Your suppliers require shorter lead times. Smaller deliveries are required, which can be spaced out over a longer period. Delivery scheduling enables suppliers to plan and allocate their resources more efficiently.

A scheduling agreement is a long-term outline agreement between vendor and ordering party over a predefined material or service that is procured on predetermined dates over a framework of time.

While using scheduling agreements, you can work with or without release documentation. You can see in the following table information about both scheduling agreements with or without release documentation.

The figure, Scheduling Agreements in Procurement - Standard Procurement Process Overview, shows the process diagram for Scheduling Agreements in Procurement – Standard Procurement.

The figure, Scheduling Agreements in Procurement - Consigned Procurement Process Overview, shows the process diagram Scheduling Agreements in Procurement – Consigned Procurement.

The figure, Scheduling Agreements for Procurement with EDI Integration, shows the process diagram of Integration of Scheduling Agreement for Procurement with External Suppliers.

You can create a scheduling agreement as follows:

• Manually
  • You enter all data on the scheduling agreement manually.
• Using a reference : As reference document (the document you copy from), you can use:
  • Purchase requisitions
  • RFQs/quotations
  • Other scheduling agreements
  • Centrally Agreed Contracts

If you wish to set up a scheduling agreement not with one of your vendors but with one of your own plants, you should create a stock transport scheduling agreement (scheduling agreement for longer-distance stock transfers).

The following are the key process flows of scheduling agreements in procurement:

• Create or change a scheduling agreement.

• Maintain a delivery schedule.

• Maintain a quota arrangement.

• Release a scheduling agreement.

• Post a goods receipt.

• Create a supplier invoice.

With this app, you can view, edit, create, delete, and release scheduling agreements. You can maintain supplier- and material-specific scheduling agreements along with schedule lines. This app also displays scheduling agreements that are soon to expire and provides a way to renew or create new scheduling agreements.

This app uses the SAP_BR_PURCHASER business role. You can:

• Display scheduling agreements based on search criteria such as agreement ID, editing status, status, supplier, agreement type, purchasing organization, and validity period.

• Display scheduling agreements such that the ones that are soon to expire appear at the beginning of the search results.

• Create a scheduling agreement manually by selecting a document type. While creating a new scheduling agreement, you can choose to do the following:

  • Enter delivery details, validity period, and payment terms.

  • Add a new item and enter the net order price if it is not maintained.

  • Enter information related to handling, GR/IR control, scheduling control, cumulative quantity, account assignment, delivery, output control, and schedule lines.

• Withdraw a purchase scheduling agreement from approval. You can then make the required changes to the purchase scheduling agreement and submit it again for approval.

• Add attachments.

• Define supplementary conditions in the application UI.

• Display the output details for scheduling agreements. If the scheduling agreement is created using this app, the output appears in PDF format.

• Apply new condition types to add a new condition type to an existing date range or to create a new date range.

• Release of a delivery schedule is possible at the item level and at the scheduling agreement level.

• Release the schedule lines to the supplier that contains finalized information for the supplier regarding quantities and delivery dates.

  Note

  • When you choose Release on the list page, this application launches the UI screen. You can select a release type such as Generate Forecast Schedule, Generate JIT Schedule, or both. Once you select a release type and choose Release, you can see the Release Result Log that displays the details of delivery schedules.

  • In cases where the flexible workflow is activated, you can release the schedules only when the scheduling agreement is finally approved.

• View the release documents for a release schedule either through the quick view or access the item and view complete details.

• Assign a scheduling agreement item to several accounts. You can define how the quantity and value of the scheduling agreement items are distributed to individual account assignment items. Multiple account assignments are supported for the scheduling agreement document. The account assignments are distributed on a quantity and percentage basis. The partial invoice for the document can be derived from account assignment category, distributed in sequence or distributed proportionally.

• Create a copy of the existing conditions of the scheduling agreement document. However, Copyis active only when you are in Edit mode. Some of the scenarios for copy conditions are:
  • Base condition without any supplementary condition: In this case, the purchaser is able to select the existing base condition and copy to a new validity period. You can manually edit the amount field accordingly.
    Note

    You cannot copy an individual supplementary condition that is not part of any base condition.
  • Copying a base condition that has a supplementary condition: In this scenario, the purchaser is able to copy the base condition along with the supplementary conditions. You can copy an existing validity period to create a new validity period.
  • You cannot select and copy multiple validity periods at the same time. Multiple conditions under the same validity period can be copied.

With this app, you can apply mass changes to fields in your scheduling agreements at the header and item level. This allows you to implement changes that affect a large number of your scheduling agreements. Whether you need to change payment terms or exchange rates at the header level, a delivery address or shipping instructions at the item level, or even partner data – in multiple scheduling agreements – this app lets you do this with just a few clicks. You can:

• Display a list of your scheduling agreements based on a range of filter criteria such as supplier, purchasing organization, purchasing group, and material.
• Display the headers and items of your scheduling agreements separately on two different tabs.
• Select the scheduling agreement headers and/or items that you want to change.
• Specify whether you want to clear, replace, or keep values in the fields.
  Note

  You can enter only one value per field.
• View the status of mass change jobs that you have scheduled for scheduling agreements
  Note

  You can also monitor the status of your jobs directly by using the Monitor Mass Changes - Purchase Scheduling Agreements app. As of release SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002, this app has been renamed from Monitor Mass Changes - Scheduling Agreements to Monitor Mass Changes - Purchase Scheduling Agreements.
• Adapt the views to display precisely the data you need.

The following table lists the SAP Fiori apps that are used in the Scheduling Agreement with Release Doc for Standard Procurement Process steps:

The following table lists the SAP Fiori apps that are used in the Scheduling Agreement Without Release Doc for Standard Procurement Process steps:

The following table lists the SAP Fiori apps that are used in the Integration of Scheduling Agreement for Procurement with External Suppliers Process steps:

In Sourcing and Procurement, several Self-service Configuration UIs (SSCUIs), also referred to as configuration steps, are available in the Manage Your Solution app. The following SSCUIs affect the area of scheduling agreements in procurement process: