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Sample copy distribution

Former Member
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I tried to understand the business process in more detail and captured the requirement as below:

Would you please guide me over the creation of FS?

Business Overview:

Publisher A , and other imprint,   publishers below publication House A every month publish  a few new books .Before the publication date arrives, it distributes sample copies among some employees, libraries, reviewers etc.  Thus every NYP( not yet published book) is distributed this way.

In book sale process, publisher like McMillan etc. sells books to-->  big book stores/ Amazon

Book shops/ Amazon will sell the books to --> readers( final consumers)

Every book has a publication date, before  which a book shop is not allowed to sell any book to the final reader/ consumer.

There exists small independent publishers under a big publisher , are called -->imprint

This  is SD Process:

user  will maintain customer master data (T Code: XD01) for every recipient of the  new book ( title).

We need to create a  z-program that will create sales orders automatically. This will generate a 0 value invoice.

A batch job may be maintained to create sales orders every month on the first day of the month.

We need to to create a Z table with a maintenance view to maintain customer master manually . The customers who are maintained in the table will be able to receive the books ( z program will create separate sales orders for each customer) .

To create sales order manually, we use the transaction code VA01. 

For every new book , a title master (material master for book will be maintained by the user. System may pick up material from MARA table, profit center wise. The Z program will select all those materials that are created in the same month and not yet reached its publication date. A stock will be maintained for each material.

System will check the no of books available is greater than the no of recipients.

Publication date of the new book will be maintained in another table. ( Will check with master data team)

Hi TW , Hi Vaselina,

I raised my query from another Id as I was not able to log into my id.The name of my last query ( raised on 19th )was : Distribution of Samples among the employees. My apology for this confusion. Thank you for your valuable observation points. I tried explain the points as you mentioned as below:

  • Books will be distributed not only among the employees, but among some selected employees , libraries, Newspaper houses etc as maintained in the z table.
  • as these books are new books ( titles) , user/ master data team will have to create new material/ title.
  • This sample book distribution will need a 0 value invoice to capture the expenditure of the publisher for a particular  customer/ recipient of the sample book. Invoice is also created to keep a record in SD & FI space.
  • Book sale will not imply any VAT calculation or any other tax calculation involved.
  • In the country the publisher operates 0 value invoice is allowed.
  • This sample copies will be distributed in purpose of review , these are not yet published new book.
  • The sample books will be picked up from warehouse and will be sent to various recipients, at various locations as mentioned in customer master. Orders will be created for every new book. Stock needs to be maintained in storage location and plant
  • Client in another ERP platform create thees sample sales orders by manually running a program.( no batch job). Thus in SAP environment user wont process these sample orders manually.
  • ( my client a publishing house is implementing SAP. There are on another ERP system now)
  • The recipient of the books will be located in various addresses, which will be mapped in the respective customer master data.
  • The recipients who will receive the sample copies are to be maintained manually as  customer in a z table, thus I hope I dont need to know the process of determining the recipient.
  • Will try mapping the return process, after I am able to map the forward ordering process and that's accepted on review. Otherwise the review books are not expected to be returned, if returned, the process will be manual.
  • If any recipient leaves the organisation, the customer master status will be changed for him and that wont let the system create an order for him.

Regards

Chandra

Accepted Solutions (0)

Answers (3)

Answers (3)

former_member182378
Active Contributor
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Chandra,

This thread could add lots of value, as it is implementation of a business process. I will study yours and Veselina's comments and comeback.

For starters, let us connect both your discussions. The effort put in their should be available for those interested.

TW

Former Member
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Thank you. My issue is sorted. I am closing the thread.

VeselinaPeykova
Active Contributor
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Why don't you share with the community what you actually did to fulfill the client's requirement?

People might be more inclined to help you in the future if you contribute to the forum.

Former Member
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Hi,

For my FS I have designed the steps below:

1. Maintain customer for all the recipients of sample copies.

2. Maintain a Z table where user will maintain customers manually on the basis of publisher, quanntity etc.

3. Material ( book) will be picked from MARA table for,specific publisher and the materials which have  flag ( MARA table-z field), system will check if the pub date= 1-31 of the current month, then system will search the access tables ( A tables) for a specific condition type ( ZPR0) representing selling price and check if the, condition value maintained in A tables for specific field combination is less than 50 .

4. FM: BaPI will be called for a specific order type. order type will be maintained in set

5. Once the above conditions will be satisfied , sales orders will be created.

After that a pseudo code will be written.

Simple!

Regards

Chandra

former_member182378
Active Contributor
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Chandra,

  1. Delivery and billing - It is a new process, your FS must contain the entire process for example order > delivery > billing. In your fs, are delivery and billing process-steps covered?
  2. Enterprise structure - Have you analyzed the organizational structure i.e. sales organization, distribution channel, division, sales office, sales group, shipping point? Are these already created or at the design phase? What organization elements will be used for this process?
  3. Pricing procedure - Is this created? You need an invoice amount of 0. is this setup? with the discount condition type(s), the routines in the pricing procedure. Part2. is the determination of the pricing procedure to your order of the sample processes.
  4. Process not clear - How are the orders in SAP created? automatically or va01 or both? This part is unclear. Ask you client, for all possible scenarios
  5. Sample books to various partners - Employees, reviewers, libraries - This will have many impacts (ramifications) business partners, account determination, as commented by
  6. Errors, sales orders not created - via interface. Good comments by Veselina on this.
  7. Build prototype in Sandbox - If possible build a prototype in your sandbox and see what all essentials are required. It might be different, for the interface part. But creating order, delivery, billing canbe done.
  8. Mandatory information - Check with business what information is a must. This can be put in each of the steps with incompletion log.

TW

VeselinaPeykova
Active Contributor
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Hello Chandra,

yes, you can manage the employees as separate customer codes. It is tedious, but if the company is not very big and if they have high retention on employees, it could be done.

You mentioned distribution of samples also to selected external companies. I am almost sure that FI/CO would like to see different postings in this case. It is also possible that they will request a different controlling object - WBS or internal orders to be determined and assigned, so that they can monitor and report on (some even ask for different assignments per plant, which is a bit too much).

I do not know how this subject is treated in your country, but in mine, if you give away free books to libraries not for evaluation purposes, this is not treated as a sampling process, but as a donation (within certain limitations), so you have to show this separately in your books. I guess that FI could post manually based on a report, but then you will lose transparency. I would probably suggest to the client some approval process for donating books to external companies- e.g. status profiles, but if he really insists on automation or chooses to handle this out of the system....


Client in another ERP platform create thees sample sales orders by manually running a program.( no batch job). Thus in SAP environment user wont process these sample orders manually.

This makes your scenario more complicated. If I understood you correctly, some of validations who is eligible to receive what and when can be done there - when this program is executed, and you will get some xml for example as a result of it.

You will need to ensure somehow that the material is in production stage already (material creation date and expected publishing date don't seem sufficient as a criteria, you are right to double-check with MD team what is the best approach - could be z-table, other fields in the material master, condition records - plenty of options are possible). Material numbers will exist already in SAP, but check if you need additional mapping for article codes, locations, customer codes between SAP and this external system.

It is important for you to determine what is the role of this external ERP platform in the process - what they actually do in it, what sort of data is or can be replicated there from SAP, what capabilities this platform has in general - can they generate all the data required for order creation and send it to you as a message (and in what format) or you need some additional logic in SAP to take data from a z-table, which they will populate and then you can generate the documents. Based on that information you can determine which systems will be involved in this process (will you need  PI for example), how you will replicate data between systems and finally - how to develop your custom program (if you need a custom program in SAP as well).


This  is SD Process:

...

Your solution proposal in the first part of the post completely disconnects the processes between these two systems. Is this what your solution architect advised? If yes, who will reconcile the information, how and when?

If I had to keep the process only in SAP and if I could afford to use a custom program, I would probably try with a document type blocked for manual processing and would check the possibility to use additional approvals for pricing conditions instead of solely relying on the maintenance of a z-table (for which you need to log changes and maintain validity periods anyway). If the documents are to be created in the background, make sure that you can get a log to review later (if an order cannot be created at all for some reason) and train the business users to check and process incomplete documents. These would always be new material codes, so master data issues will be common for the first couple of months.