can you define a common distribution channel only for material master and not customer master?

[Former Member]

Hi Consultants

it is my understanding that if you define distribution channel 01 as common dis chl for 02, and you checked master data, then both material master and customer master will be referenced from 01 to 02. However, if it possible to restrict this to only customer master, not material master?

Thanks in advance.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Li Ai

Check this scenario in your Development Server

in configuration you have two option for maintain common distribution channel

1. for condtions

2. customer/material

means in configuration level we cannot restrict common distribution specific to material

but you can check this at end user side

1.create the material while creating the material enter the distribution channel which is not common distribution channel. ex: 01 then check this out by creating the sales order.

Best Regards,

MH

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Muhammed, in my case if I have 2 distribution channel 01, 02 and I wanna maintain material master the same for both, but customer master different. based on what you said, I create another common distribution channel 00 as reference for both 01 and 02, and maintain only my material master in 00, maintain my customer master seperately in 01, and 02.

Is this the right approah? thanks!

[former_member182378]

Li,

 However, if it possible to restrict this to only customer master, not material master?

No, this is not possible.

Reference distribution channel field DCh Cust/Mt, in VOR1 is applicable for both CMR and MMR.

SAP F1 Help for field "DCh Cust/Mt", see underlined:

Reference distrib.channel for cust.and material masters
Example
Distrib.channel
Ref.distrib.channel
01
01
02
01
03
01
04
04
In this example, only distribution channels 01 and 04 have customer and material master data defined. Distribution channels 01, 02, and 03 share the master data that you defined for distribution channel 01. 

Thus user can not create CMR (customer master record) for sales area with distribution channel 02.

And user can not create MMR (material master record) for sales area with distribution channel 02.

Extra information: Sales order that is created for sales area with distribution channel 02, can be created for customer which is not created for sales area with distribution channel 02 but this customer is created for sales area with distribution channel 01. Same for MMR.

Added by Typewriter: Side comment: Good post by Vinu. This post is in the same lines as the post by Vinu.

Message was edited by: T W

[Former Member]

Hi Li ,

As per the standard SAP, you cannot differentiate the common distribution channel only for Material. It is always combination of Material and customer as per the customization. I would recommend not to maintain the common distribution channel at all.

Only drawback is that the effort of creating the master data for the users.

With Regards

Vinu

[Former Member]

Dear Li

The answer to your question is yes from SD point of view,

SPRO>SD>Sales>Sales Documents Header>Assign Sales Area To Sales Document Types

Here For column RefD **if you wan to make this common

If all sales document types are allowed for all distribution channels, leave the field blank. Otherwise, enter the distribution channel you want to use as a reference.

And for your Division column

If all sales document types are allowed for all divisions, leave the field blank. Otherwise, enter the division you want to use as a reference.

Division	Reference division
01	01
02	01
03	01
04	04

In this example, only divisions 01 and 04 have sales document types defined. Divisions 01, 02, and 03 share the sales document types defined for division 01. Division 04 has its own sales document types. When you create a sales order in division 03, the system checks the sales document type against the types defined for division 01. You do not maintain sales document types in divisions 02 and 03, since they are never used.

Thanking you!

Ashish Mishra

[Former Member]

Thanks for your reply Ashish, however, the question lies under customer master other than order types.

[Former Member]

Dear Li Ai

Yea, by this setting you can define common distribution channel for material master and not for customer master.

i.e. Customers with different sales area are eligible to buy goods from a particular common Distribution Channel of Materials, but the will kill your Product Attributes and its properties.

Thanking you

Ashish Mishra

[former_member183879]

Hi,

If you look at the purpose of division, it is used to classify materials.  Different categories of materials are assigned to various divisions in material master.

The objective of common division is to reduce the customer master records to enable the sales of different categories of material to same customer.

If materials of different divisions should be sold to a customer, then the customer should be extended to each division. This adds lot of bulk to the database table, This is not needed if the data is goign to be same for all the sales areas. In order to reduce this bulk of data, we use common divisions.

The same logic applies for condition records too.

But as division unique identifies the category of the material, we cannot and should not use common divisions. Material is the reason for common division and it by itself cannot have common division.

Hope the answer is clear to you

[Former Member]

Thanks a lot Navan for your reply. You mentioned the case where material will be in different division and all customer are treated the same for different sales area. However, my case is reverse, my material are treated the same across the sales area, however, customer will be treated different for different sales area. So it is actually a question for common distribution channel other than common division.