Sales Area Determination for STO deliveries

In SAP Fashion Management Solution (FMS); Sales area determination for Stock transport order deliveries can be controlled via setting in the supplying site – “Valuation / Inv. Mgmnt” tab – field “Sales Area Determination”

Let’s take an example and understand how it works.

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

Sales Area Determination fo... by on Scribd

Procurement Restriction Using Material Statuses

SAP provides functionality to maintain statuses at both material and size level to control usability of the material or sizes. Once this functionality is activated, it can be used to control placing a sales order for material/size, purchasing the material/size or it can be sued merely as a status field for reporting. These status can be placed in different levels in the material master.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

  Procurement Restriction Using Material Statuses by Malith Tharaka Perera on Scribd

Text Types on Purchase Orders

SAP provides the ability to maintain different types of text or comments on documents such as purchase orders, sales orders, deliveries, invoices etc. Additional text types can be configured depending on the business requirements and thy can be used to communicate comments with external parties. For example text on Purchase order can be put on the purchase order output so that the vendor can receive and act on these comments. In this document, we will see how additional text types (SAP provides a few standard ones) can be created and used on the purchase orders. Similar text types can be created on other documents in SAP as well.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

Text Types on Purchase Orders by Malith Tharaka Perera on Scribd

Using Purchasing Contracts in SAP

By definition Contracts are long term agreements the business enters with the vendor for providing a certain quantity of a product for period of time. In SAP, this can be represented by a Purchasing Contract. Contracts can be created for the value or quantity. These contract can be set up to reduce or to be utilized by purchase orders that are being placed with reference to the contracts. Typically the businesses scenario for using Contracts would be when they want to reserve capacity at the vendor or for booking greige in the manufacturing context.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

Using Purchasing Contracts in SAP by Malith Tharaka Perera on Scribd

How to set fields as mandatory or optional in the purchase order

Some time back we learnt about how we can set fields mandatory, optional or hidden in the customer master. Click here to view that post. Similarly, in one of our previous posts we also learnt about how we can set fields mandatory, optional or hidden in the material master. Click here to read that.

Today we are going to learn how we can set fields mandatory, optional or display in the purchase order. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

How to Set Fields as Mandatory or Optional in the Purchase Order by Anupa Wijesinghe on Scribd

Creating Prepack Articles in FMS

There are different types of article masters that one can create in FMS. Previously we discussed the creation of Generic Article Master in FMS – Click here. In this document we will take a look at how we can create a Structured Article. There are different types of structured articles – Sales sets, Displays and Prepacks which can be used for different business scenarios based on whether they are purchased, sold and kept in inventory together or not. The common factor making it a structured article is that they are made up of a number components. So inherently they will have a Bill of Material which shows the quantities of the components they are made up of.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

  Creating Prepack Articles in FMS by Malith Tharaka Perera on Scribd

Profit Center Substitution in Sales Orders

Generally the profit center in sales orders is derived based profit center in the material master and it flows through to the billing. However in certain scenarios there could be a need to post to a different profit center as an exception or it could be that the business wants to follow a different rule altogether, i.e. post to a profit center based on a different logic such as - derive based on the “Distribution Channel” of the sale order.

This could be handled by the use of a substitution rule using transaction code 0KEM with few simple steps, let’s take a look at it!

This works for the traditional EC-PCA - Profit center accounting as well as New G/L.

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Author: Gayani Karunathilake

Profit Center Substitution in Sales Orders by Gayani Karunathilake on Scribd

How to Set Up Basic Confirmations

Confirmation control in SAP is the mechanism of tracking the various stages of the procurement process from the time the purchase order is sent to the vendor, up until the goods receipt is done. 

The different stages could be PO receipt, order acknowledgement, Exfactory date communication, shipping notification etc. Depending on the business requirement the confirmation control in SAP can be set up in such a way that each of these stages can be tracked with a confirmation to the purchase order by defining them as a Confirmation Category. The grouping and sequencing of the Confirmation Categories is done in the setup of the Confirmation Control key.

Standard SAP provides a set of commonly used Confirmation Categories and Confirmation Control keys, allowing the flexibility to additional Confirmation Categories and Confirmation Control keys to be defined. In this document we will see how this can be achieved.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

How to Set Up Basic Confirmations by Malith Tharaka Perera on Scribd

Schedule Job for STO Delivery Creation

In this document we will take a look at how we can schedule a background job to create outbound deliveries for STOs using the delivery due list in SAP. (similar to delivery creation for sales orders) 

Typically this is done using VL10B transaction and can be automated and scheduled as a batch job if the business has a requirement for automation of the creation of STO deliveries.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

Schedule Job for STO Delivery Creation by Malith Tharaka Perera on Scribd

FMS Stock Transport Orders with negative inventory at the site

In complex retail businesses, goods need to be moved from distribution center (DC) to store, store back to distribution center as well as between stores. In order to handle this business process, standard SAP functionality called “Stock Transport Orders” (STO’s) are commonly used. Please click here to view configuration steps required to configure STO’s in your system.

Due to complexity of the work and practical difficulties, most of the stores (Sites) tend to finish / record their daily transactions in SAP after the business day closure. For example, let’s say there is an inbound STO from another store asking for 100 quantities from material ABC. In the SAP system; user can find 98 as available, but physically quantity 100 is available in the stock. In such a case, typical store manager would want to deliver 100 right away and do the stock adjustment for + 2 after the business day closure.

In this case (until the stock adjustment is posted); store inventory for material ABC needs to go negative. Standard SAP supports this functionality and today let’s see what we need to configure in SAP FMS for it. I will explain the configuration / process steps using below example. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

FMS Stock Transport Orders With Negative Inventory at the Site by Anupa Wijesinghe

Generate an email with an Excel attachment from an ABAP program

There are business requirements where you need to generate emails with or without attachments based on a custom logic in an ABAP program. This document describes how to generate and email using an ABAP program.

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Author: Harsha Thelikorala

Generate an Email With an Excel Attachment From an ABAP Program by Harsha Thelikorala

Inter-company Billing for STOs

In the previous document we discussed the Logistics part of the Inter-company STO process. Please Click here to read that article.

In this document we will be discussing the Intercompany Billing process which will happen once the logistic steps have been completed. This needs several configuration and master data setting to be in place to correctly transfer the price between the two companies involved in the transfer process which is normally the standard prices plus a margin. 

Let’s see how we can achieve this by going through the step by step guide of this document.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

Intercompany Billing for STOs by Malith Tharaka Perera

Finance Document Park and Release

Having multi-level control of the documents being parked is a requirement of many finance departments. 

SAP offers the park and post functionality and the ability to block and release documents before a payment could be made for an invoice.

This document will detail out the basic configuration steps for document park and release functionality.

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Author: Gayani Karunathilake

Finance Document Park and Release by Gayani Karunathilake

Stock Transport Orders between Storage Locations in FMS

Some time back we discussed about how we can setup stock transport orders in SAP. 

• Inter Company Stock Transport Orders - Click here
• Intra Company Stock Transport Orders - Click here
• Rush Stock Transport Orders - Click here

Similarly, it’s very often requested by certain customers to setup stock transport orders to move stock between storage locations within same plant.

For example, let’s say you have two buildings in same physical location and those were configured as two different storage locations under one plant (Site) in SAP. If you want to move goods between one building to the other (mean in SAP it has to be one storage location to the other), you have 2 ways of handling it in SAP.

1. You can do an inventory transport posting between storage location to storage location
2. You can use the stock transport order process between two storage locations

Today we will see how we can setup stock transport order process between two storage locations in SAP FMS. Since I am using SAP FMS, some setting might be different from what you have seen in standard SAP (R/3). 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

Stock Transport Orders Between Storage Locations in FMS

Inter company Stock Transport Order Processing

Companies with plants in multiple locations typically have the requirement to transfer stock between plants. The STO (stock transport order) process is used to handle this transfer systematically in SAP. 

However if these plants belong to different Company Codes then we need to use the Intercompany STO process. This requires several configuration steps and prerequisites to be in place for this solution to work and entities can benefit from the ability to monitor stock in transit, traceability through document flow and ability to account for delivery costs on the stock transport order.

In this document we will discuss the prerequisites and configuration that needs to be in place to achieve the Inter company Stock Transport Order process in SAP.
Please click here to read the invoice creation part of this process.

• For Intra Company Stock Transport Order Processing, please click here.
• For Rush Stock Transport Orders in SAP Fashion Management Solution (FMS) (Where delivery get created automatically at STO save), click here.
• For stock transport orders between storage locations, please click here.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

Intercompany STO Process by Malith Tharaka Perera

Use of Partner Bank Type in Vendor Master

Most of the organizations share the vendor master data across multiple company codes. Vendors may provide different bank accounts based on the resident country, currency or any other business specific criteria.

SAP vendor master holds the bank information in the general data segment. I.e It is available across all company codes. Therefore often times it becomes a requirement to provide a solution to make payments to different vendor bank accounts based on business specific requirements.

SAP has provided the Partner Bank Type field in the vendor master as the driver for this solution.

Let’s take a look how we can use this!

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Author: Gayani Karunathilake

Use of Partner Bank Type in Vendor Master

Rush Stock Transport Orders in FMS (Immediate Delivery Creation at STO Save)

Most of us are familiar with “Rush sales order processing” in SAP. This is to create a delivery document as soon as a sales order is saved in SAP. If you’re working in SAP IS-AFS (Industry Solution – Apparel and Footwear) or SAP FMS (Fashion Management Solution) system, the allocation process (Commonly known as ARun) should take place in background automatically. (In FMS, “ARun” will execute in background only in case if the Site / Article is setup as “ARun” relevant).

We have similar setup for stock transport orders (STO), where we can automatically create a delivery document in the supplying site (plant), when stock transport order is saved in SAP. This process also known as immediate delivery creation at stock transport orders or Rush STO. Similar to above rush sales order scenario, Allocation / ARun needs to be executed in background in SAP IS-AFS or SAP FMS for rush STO’s. 

• For Intra Company Stock Transport Orders (Stock transport between between plants in the same Company), please click here.
• For Inter Company Stock Transport Orders (Stock transport between between plants in different Companies), please click here.
• For stock transport orders between storage locations, please click here.

Today we will discuss how we can configure a new rush stock transport order type (STO) in SAP FMS. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

Rush Stock Transport Orders in FMS (Immediate Delivery Creation at STO Save) by Anupa Wijesinghe

Info Update Flag on Purchase Order

The “Info Update” flag on the purchase order may not be so obvious and you may not even notice it being there. Ever thought about what functionality it drives in SAP and how it could impact purchasing? Let’s discuss the significance of this tick and how to turn it off if the intended functionality is not required.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

  Info Update Flag on Purchase Order by Malith Tharaka Perera

Purchasing Partner Determination

Businesses have to interact with different third party partners such as vendors, buying offices, invoicing parties etc. during the purchasing process. SAP provides functionality to define and clear identify the role and relationship of these parties to the supplier.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

  Purchasing Partner Determination by Malith Tharaka Perera

How to configure an Organization Structure in SAP FMS

In every SAP implementation, first activity is to understand the business requirement in detail and map those in SAP. This time of the project is commonly known as blue print phase. During blue print phase, one of our key activities is to identify and map their organizational chart into SAP format. This org chart is commonly known as organization structure in SAP. Unlike in any other SAP industry solution, IS-Retail and SAP FMS is different in terms of the plant (Site) creation. Plant (Site) creation is known to be a configuration in all other SAP versions, where as IS-Retail and SAP FMS having it as a master data. Today we will see how to configure a sample organization structure in SAP FMS. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  How to Configure an Organization Structure in SAP FMS