SAP ERP

Purchasing is a component of SAP MM module and its process can be depicted as

MRP (material resource planning) creates procurement proposal and later gets converted into Purchase Requisition. Next step is assigning source to Purchase Requisition, and release of Purchase Requisition. The PR gets converted to Purchase Order and upon goods receipt an invoice receipt can be done to complete the purchasing process. Additionally payment is processed (in FI module).

Procurement doesn’t have to start by the MRP, it can be initiated by consumption based planning or by direct creation of PR or PO.

MRP is a system function to determine the material requirements on both the material and BoM level. A BoM (Bill of Materials) is a list of components and subcomponents a single material is consisting of.

One of the mere basic documents in Purchasing in SAP is a purchase requisition.

Purchase Requisition

Purchase requisitions can be created automatically by system or manually. They can be converted in purchase orders but only upon release (approval of purchase requisition).

Number ranges in purchase requisitions are required just as in other document, for the purpose of assigning the document number to new created documents. Later, these number ranges are being assigned to different document types we can define to be used in purchase requisition processing.

Purchase Info Record

Purchase info records are information about terms for purchasing a specific material from a vendor. They are maintained at vendor/material combination and can contain data for pricing and conditions, over-delivering and under-delivering limits, planned delivery date, availability period.

Procurement types in info record

• Standard – A standard info record contains information for standard purchase orders. The info records can be created for materials and services with and without master records.
• Subcontracting – A subcontractor info record contains ordering information for subcontract orders. For example, if you subcontract the assembly of a component, the subcontractor info record would include the vendor’s (subcontractor’s) price for assembling the component.
• Pipeline – A pipeline info record contains information on a vendors commodity that is supplied through a pipeline or pipes (for example, oil or water) or by similar means (for example, electricity through the mains). The info record contains the vendor’s price for the use of such commodities by the buyer (“pipeline withdrawals”). You can keep withdrawal/usage prices for different validity periods.
• Consignment – A consignment info record contains information on a material that vendors keep available at their own cost on the orderers premises. The info record contains the vendor’s price for withdrawals by the orderer from consignment stock. As in the case of the pipeline info record, you can keep prices for different validity periods.

Create a Purchase Info Record

Purchase info records can be created for every type of procurement, and are processed using the transaction code.

First step

• Enter transaction code in command prompt.
• Key for creating the info record is Vendor/Material combination. You can enter purchasing organization and/or Plant.
• You have to choose an info category for desired procurement type. Press ENTER to proceed to the next screen.

Step 2)

Here you give information on Info Record General Data. This information is maintained for all procurement types (maintained only once for all: Standard, Subcontracting, Pipeline, Consignment), and there are the most relevant fields:

• Reminder 1, 2, 3: These three fields indicate remainders to be issued to vendor. Negative value indicates that the vendor should be prior to quotation or delivery date.
• Vendor mat. No: Material number that is used by the vendor for this material.
• Vendor material group: material group used by the vendor for this material.
• Sales person: Name of the contact person.
• Telephone: phone number of contact person or vendor
• Return agreement: this can indicate if goods return is available, and if there are refunds available.
• Order unit: unit in which this material is ordered by vendor.
• Certificate category: type of certificate issued by the vendor that applies to this material.
• Country of origin: country in which this material is produced.

After entering all the desired data, we can click the button Purch. Org. Data 1 to be transferred to the screen for entering Purchase Organization dependent information.

Step 3)

This view is maintained separately for every procurement type. We have chosen Standard procurement type, and we can populate several relevant fields here.

• Planned delivery time: default time in days in which the material delivery is planned.
• Purchasing group: purchasing group mentioned in material master lessons.
• Standard quantity: standard purchase quantity for material.
• Minimum quantity: do not allow procurement of a quantity less than stated here.
• Maximum quantity: we do not want to purchase more than this quantity at a time.
• Net price: net price of material per procurement unit.
• Incoterms: trading and delivery terms.

Step 4)

Press the Conditions button. The next screen is used for maintaining pricing conditions and as you can see, price that was entered on the previous screen was transferred to this screen.

• Condition type: you can enter a condition type in this field.
• Amount per unit: in these 4 fields you can enter an amount and amount unit (for example 2.800 EUR) and quantity for which this amount is valid (1 PAL).
• Valid from.
• Valid to. Fields 3 and 4 represent a validity period for condition(s). It means that this condition is valid from 10.05.2013. until 31.12.9999. (infinite future validity).

Step 5)

Standard texts for this material/vendor combination can be defined in Texts view of the purchase info record.

• You can enter the info record note in these five lines, and it will be active only if a check box for info record note is ticked.
• Same logic as previous except that this is a standard item text that will be copied to purchase order item.

Once you have entered all the desired information about our material/vendor combination you can save the transaction data and will be presented with information about the purchase info record number assigned to our info record. We can use it for future reference to edit or display our record.