No goods issue should be scheduled last week of the month

[Former Member]

We have a limited number of customers that for financial reasons are demanding that we don't ship and invoice goods between the 25th and last day of every month. The main problem for the customer is having the invoice issued on those dates but since we by law have to invoice on the same day as we ship the goods we cant ship the goods and create the invoice later.

Several attempts to persuade the customer to change have failed so now us in the SAP team have been asked to find a solution to handle this in SAP.

Below is a picture showing what our customers are demanding from us.

We are using both routes and route schedules and we confirm the delivery date to customers including transportation lead time. We are looking for a solution in SAP standard and so far we have identified the following alternatives.

Unloading points

One solution could be to use Unloading points with a specific calendar in which we have blocked some dates effectively saying the customer doesn't want to receive goods these dates. Since we have transportation time included in our scheduling we have to adjust the blocked dates in the calendar accordingly. For example, if we have 2 days of transportation we have to block starting from 2 days after the last date we can ship. See example below.

The main disadvantage we have found with this is that if a user by mistake inputs a requested delivery date on one of the blocked dates the system only issues a warning but it doesn't shift the delivery date. Because of this we still face the risk of planning goods issue to a date we shouldnt ship.

Shipping point

The second thing we have tried is to create an additional shipping point. To this shipping point we have assigned a calendar in which the dates from 25th to the last each month are non-working days.

Route schedules with year and period

[former_member183879 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Your second solution is the right solution for this approach and it is good that you have already thought about this.

You can make the last 5 days of every month as holidays in that calendar. This shipping point can be maintained in customer master and as a result you will get this shipping point in sales order and delivery.

now you can maintain this shipping point in route schedule and system will accordingly plan your delivery dates and times. As the goods issue dates are confirmed either before the deadline or after the deadline, deliveries also cannot be done for these orders during these days.

This is the simplest and only solution in SAP. Otherwise you may have to do some custom development.

[Former Member]

My thread was posted by mistake before it contained all information. Below is the complete post as it was intended from the beginning.

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We have a limited number of customers that for financial reasons are demanding that we don't ship and invoice goods between the 25th and last day of every month. The main problem for the customer is having the invoice issued on those dates but since we by law have to invoice on the same day as we ship the goods we cant ship the goods and create the invoice later.

Several attempts to persuade the customer to change have failed so now us in the SAP team have been asked to find a solution to handle this in SAP.

Below is a picture showing what our customers are demanding from us.

We are using both routes and route schedules and we confirm the delivery date to customers including transportation lead time. We are looking for a solution in SAP standard and so far we have identified the following alternatives.

Unloading points

One solution could be to use Unloading points with a specific calendar in which we have blocked some dates effectively saying the customer doesn't want to receive goods these dates. Since we have transportation time included in our scheduling we have to adjust the blocked dates in the calendar accordingly. For example, if we have 2 days of transportation we have to block starting from 2 days after the last date we can ship. See example below.

The main disadvantage we have found with this is that if a user by mistake inputs a requested delivery date on one of the blocked dates the system only issues a warning but it doesn't shift the delivery date. Because of this, we still face the risk of planning goods issue to a date we shouldn’t ship.

Shipping point

The second thing we have tried is to create an additional shipping point. To this shipping point we have assigned a calendar in which the dates from 25th to the last each month are non-working days. To have this shipping point automatically determined for the relevant customers we have created new shipping conditions that we assign in the customer master record. Apart from this, we also set up route determination for the new shipping conditions.

Our initial tests have been positive. The main disadvantage we have found is the fact that we needed to duplicate our shipping conditions. We had 10 before and to cater for the new requirement we needed to duplicate these so now we have 20. We intend to name them as clearly as possible but we are still worried the users will select the wrong one when changing in the sales order, i.e. select a shipping condition the determines the normal shipping point for a customer for which we shouldn’t ship to at the end of the month. It is a small risk and if we want to stock to a standard solution we will have to live with it. 

Route schedules with year and period

The last thing we have tried is using route schedules with year and period but it seems like we misunderstood how this works. We set up the following:

• - Route schedule for week 13 2015, day 1 = March 23^rd
• - Route schedule for week 13 2015, day 2 = March 24^th
• - Route schedule for week 14 2015, day 3 = April 1^st
• - Route schedule for week 14 2015, day 4 = April 2^nd
• - Route schedule for week 14 2015, day 5 = April 3^rd

Our plan with this was that for weeks 13 and 14 the system would only schedule goods issue on the days there were route schedules. This idea came from that when using route schedules without year and period the systems only schedules goods issue on the days there is route schedules. Using route schedules with date and period did however not work like this. The system did use these route schedules but goods issue was also confirmed on for example March 25^th when there was no route schedule.

The advantage we saw with this solution (had it worked) was that we wouldn’t have had to create the additional shipping conditions or do other customizing changes.

Summary

We are pretty happy with the shipping point solution but we want to check if there is anything we have missed in this solution or if there are other standard solution we should explore. 

[Former Member]

Rickard,

we are still worried the users will select the wrong one when changing in the sales order,

Well, for sales order creation, you can place the 'right' shipping condition in the customer master.  Sales orders for these 'demanding' customers can be configured to default to the shipping condition (and therefore the shipping point) that is required. It would then take a conscious activity to 'make' the wrong shipping point be determined.

..we are still worried the users will select the wrong one..

I will guarantee that 'some day' they will make a mistake; there is no such thing as perfection in business.  I think you have to balance the risk with the reward.  How often will they make such a mistake?  What happens if they make a mistake and the delivery is created?  Can this risk be mitigated with training?  Is there a report that can be run to identify such 'mistakes' before PGI?  What happens if the order is actually invoiced on the 'wrong' date; e.g. will your company be forced to go out of business?  Or....?

There is not much opportunity using unloading points or route schedules, since the planned date of PGI is mostly determined by the shipping point.

Solutions I have seen for this problem have always involved use of a custom calendar assigned to custom shipping points.  In the system I am currently working, there are about 300 plants relevant for shipping, but on average there are 6 shipping points assigned to each plant; and most of them were assigned to solve the business problem of consolidating certain customers' orders such that they ONLY ship on certain dates..

Best Regards,

DB49

[Former Member]

Thanks a lot for the input! I agree with your comment that we have to balance the risk with the reward and in our case I believe the reward is much bigger than the risk. However, sometimes the business has a low acceptance for "non-perfect" solution so I just wanted to check if there was anything else we should consider.

I will propose the shipping point solution to the business and see how they like it.

[Former Member]

Rickard,

The second thing we have tried is to create an additional shipping point. To this shipping point we have assigned a calendar in which the dates from 25th to the last each month are non-working days.

And?

Best Regards,

DB49