Difference between General Item Category Group and Item category Group

Sometimes you might have noticed that there are two fields in the material master called, 

 1. General item Category Group in Basic Data tab – MARA / MTPOS_MARA 

 2. Item Category group in the “Sales: Sales Org 2” tab - MVKE / MTPOS

SAP has provided these two fields to use it for two different requirements. During sales order creation, with the same article, if you want to determine a different item category for a given sales area, then you can use the field “Item Category Group” (MVKE / MTPOS). 

Since this field is located in the Material master sales data table (MVKE) you can specify different item category groups for each sales area. But the “General item category group” (MARA / MTPOS_MARA) is located in the Material Master General data (MARA) table; you cannot use this field for such a purpose. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

Difference Between General Item Category Group and Item Category Group by Anupa Wijesinghe 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

How to Set Up an EAN Category

The International Article Number (also known as European Article Number or EAN or UPC) is a standard describing a barcode numbering system used in global trade to uniquely identify a specific product. Typically EANs are 12 digits, with the last digit being a check digit. (will be assigned automatically). These numbers help customers and warehouse uniquely identify a product using bar code scanning or EDI transmissions. Businesses are required to purchase an EAN number range before it can be set up in SAP. EANs can be internal or external; you would use internal if you have purchased an EAN range and you want SAP to generate numbers from that range or external if you are using your own number range.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

  How to Set Up an EAN Category by Malith Tharaka Perera on Scribd

How to allow multiple division materials in one sales order

We use division field in material master to differentiate materials in to different categories. For example, in apparel and footwear industry, we use divisions as Apparel, Footwear, Accessories, etc. All apparel articles are created with the division "Apparel", Footwear articles are created with the division "Footwear" and accessories are created with division "Accessories".

During sales order creation we need to allow all type of divisions to be entered in the one sales order. This is required as some customers buy apparel and footwear at the same time. Therefore you need to maintain all items in a one sales order.

This functionality can be achieved in SAP standard with below configuration steps. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

How to Allow Multiple Division Materials in One Sales 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

Free Goods Determination in SAP

Free goods is a standard SAP delivered functionality that can be implemented to handle promotions such as “Buy 2 get 1 Free”. In this case, you have 2 scenarios to look at.

1 – Buy 2 get 1 free – In this case customer is only paying for 1 item and physically getting 2. This scenario is known as “Inclusive”

2 – Buy 2 and get 3rd item free – In this case, customer only pays for 2 items and he get’s another item for free. This scenario is known as “Exclusive”

Let’s see how we can configure the inclusive free goods scenario in SAP. Fee goods use the famous condition technique in SAP. Please click here to read about the condition technique in SAP.

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

Free Goods Determination in SAP by Anupa Wijesinghe 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

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

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

How to add images to article masters in FMS

It’s often requested by most of the retailer to add their product images into article masters in SAP. This helps business users to see the product and not have to remember it by the article number it self. SAP IS Retail solution as well as SAP FMS (SAP Fashion Management Solution) supports for this business requirement as an out of the box functionality. 

Today, let’s see how we can add such product images to article masters in SAP FMS. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  How to Add Images to Article Masters in FMS

Process Inbound IDOCs From PI using serialization

Sometime back we discussed about how we can process IDOCs using serialization in SAP. Click here to read it. 
There are business requirements where you need to process multiple IDOC message types in a serialized manner using PI immediately without a scheduled batch job. i.e. Customer master with address master (DEBMAS with ADRMAS) Vendor master with address master (CREMAS with ADRMAS) Info record master with vendor master & material master (INFREC with MATMAS and CREMAS) In order to process these IDOC’s successfully, you must process then in a sequence. It is not necessary IDOCs to be for master data distribution, you can serialize any message type. 

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Author: Harsha Thelikorala

Process Inbound IDOCs From PI Using Serialization

Process Inbound IDOCs Using Serialization

When there is a dependency between IDOC message types while processing or distributing, IDOCs must be processed in a serialized manner. 

In order to achieve this requirement, IDOC serialization must be used.

i.e. Vendor Master, Customer Master, Material Master, etc.

If you want to read about how we can process Inbound IDOCs from PI Using Serialization; please click here.

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Author: Harsha Thelikorala

  Process Inbound IDOCs Using Serialization by Harsha Thelikorala

Basic Subcontracting User Manual

In a subcontracting scenario materials are sent to a third party vendor to add value by carrying out an operation. Once the operation is completed the subcontractor (3rd party vendor) sends the value added materials to the manufacturing plant in order to complete the finished good.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

  Basic Subcontracting User Manual

Fashion Attributes in FMS

In SAP Fashion Management Solution (FMS), there are 3 fields provide by SAP to do field name changes in an article master. Those fields are know as “Fashion Attributes” and located in the “Basic Data Fashion” tab. In the standard SAP, we had to get the help of an ABAP developer to do such field name changes. But with FMS, functional consultant can change the field names via customizing.

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  Fashion Attributes in FMS

Merchandise Category in FMS

“Merchandise Category” is a mandatory field that you need to key in when creating a new article (material) in FMS (SAP Fashion Management Solution) via transaction MM41. This is same in the IS-Retail as well. This drives number of variant articles that you’re going to create based on color, size variations. However you will not see this field in the standard R/3 material master creation transaction (MM01).    

Merchandise Category enables the user to categorize their merchandise in a structural way within the organization. This will allow the management to change their focus from individual article level to merchandise groups.

Below steps will explain you all steps required to define a new merchandise category in FMS.

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  Merchandise Category in FMS