Message control settings for customer master

It is often requested by most of the businesses to have a control in customer master data creation, such as to avoid duplicate customer numbers with same address data, same VAT, number, etc. Standard SAP provides this facility via a message control settings in the customer master. You can configure standard SAP messages based on your business requirement to avoid such cases.

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  Message Control Settings for Customer Master by Anupa Wijesinghe 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 Set Country Specific Checks

SAP entails many checks and validations; one such validation that SAP allows you to control is the Country specific checks. These include Postal code, Bank & Bank Account and Tax Number validations. This is useful when you need to update changes in country specific validations or remove some checks for certain business requirements. 

In this document we will see how to set/remove country specific check in customization.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

How to Set Country Specific Checks 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

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

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

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

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

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

Dual Control in Vendor Master

SAP provides dual control functionality to control and securely manage changes made to sensitive fields in Vendor and Customer master data records.

Once this functionality is activated changes made by one user role, needs to be confirmed/authorized by another user role for the change to take effect. Till then the changes remain visible but the account will be blocked for transactions such as payment runs etc. This facilitates tight control over unauthorized modifications to vendor and customer master fields.In this document we will discuss the configuration that needs to be in place for activating dual control for vendor master fields, keeping in mind that similar functionality is available for customer master as well.

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Author: Tharaka Perera

  Dual Control in Vendor Master

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

Credit Master Text Configuration

Sometime back we discussed how to configure text types in SAP. Please click here to view that. But in that configuration we didn’t see the text types that are associated with credit masters (Transaction: FD32). There are two types of credit texts available in the credit master. They are; 

  1. Central Text

  2. Credit Control Area Text

Above text types cannot be configured under normal text type configuration transaction VOTXN. Therefore let’s see where this customizing is stored in IMG

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  Credit Master Text Configuration

How to activate AFS top node check (JS Partner) by sales organization

Earlier we discussed about the error message that we have seen in IS-AFS system at sales order creation. i.e; Top node XXXX for ship-to YYYY not maintained or ship-to is not valid

Message no. 8W321

Click here to read more about the JS partner function in IS-AFS.

This is a global setting in the AFS system and therefore you cannot activate/ de-activate it only for a given company code or for a sales organization.

But in todays business world it is very common that one company acquire another company. Lets say both companies were on SAP IS-AFS and one has the top node heck activated and other doesn’t. Now when you try to migrate customer master date from top node de-activated SAP system to the tope node active SAP system, you will get above mentioned error message. 

In such a scenario you have 2 options to manage this situation.

1. Do the necessary master data change in the partner functions to have “JS” partner assigned to all ship to parties

2. Control the top node check error message for a given sales org / company

Today we will discuss about the 2nd option mentioned above.

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  How to Activate AFS Top Node Check (JS) by Sales Organization

Transportation Scheduling in SAP

Transportation scheduling (Outbound Scheduling) is a standard SAP functionality which can be used to determine more accurate confirmed delivery date to the customer.

During sales order creation, user has to enter the customer requested delivery date in the sales order line item. Based on the address where the ship to party is located and where goods are delivered from (Plant / Shipping point) and system determine a route for this delivery. This route contains number of dates required for the transportation (Transportation lead time). Based on above information, system executes the transportation scheduling. 

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Author: Anupa Wijesinghe

  Transportation Scheduling in SAP