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

Reversal of F110 Payments

Payment batch processing is one of the core functionalities in a finance department which is handled through SAP.  Usually a single batch would consist of hundreds of individual payments to difference vendors and there could be user errors regarding the date of the payment, configuration errors that could pick up the wrong house bank or there could not be sufficient funds in the selected bank, or even the users could have used an incorrect payment method to pay the vendors. All of these are common issues where reversal of payment batches are required.

The traditional reversal process is time consuming and each document has to be identified and processed individually.

However to address this issue a new program RFF110S_REVERSE has been introduced by SAP. This program has been made available as of February 2015 as note for all releases prior to release 6.7 and is delivered in the support package as of release 6.7.

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Author: Gayani Karunathilake

  Reversal of F110 Payments by Gayani Karunathilake 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 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

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

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