Empty MLAN entries creation on saving Sales Gen Plant view for Material master.

[former_member1228025]

Scenario:

In material master, when a material is extended to a particular plant by creating Sales General plant view through MM01, the mentioned plant specific data is being stored in MARC table as expected. However after saving the view, we also see a new entry being created in MLAN table for the corresponding country of the plant, but with blank tax classification values. This occurs even when the material is not extended to any of the Sales Org’s for Sales Org view before or after creating the Sales Gen plant view.

Query:

1. Is MLAN entry creation in above scenario a valid standard SAP behavior?

2. If it is so how would MLAN data suffice for anyone if the tax classification values are left blank? Or what would be the reason for creating the entry in       MLAN but without any tax information? How could that even be useful for any transactions.

3. If it is not, we have this behavior occurring in our system, would there be a note for a fix?

Please let me know in case any more information is required for answering the above queries.

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

MLAN has no direct connection to a sales view or sales org or plant. If you look at the table it just knows the material number and a country.

The country is taken from the plant customizing.

MLAN is a record  that serves taxes in purchasing and sales (see tax indicator field in the purchasing view, it is stored in MLAN-TAXIM  field.

MLAN is created when you maintain a plant view and updated when you extend a materials sales view and maintain tax classification.

[former_member1228025 · Accepted solution]

Hi Jurgen,

Thanks for your response, It does provide me some new perspectives. However I still have few questions based on your answer.

1. In SAP Material master, I see 3 views pertaining to sales i.e. Sales general Plant view, Sales Org view and Sales text view. And there is Foreign trade export view which is an extension of the Sales gen plant view.

When you say 'Sales view' what is the exact view you meant above.

2. Assume the first view I would create after basic view for a material is Sales Gen plant view. And later this information is being interface to some other SAP system where the Sales Org views for same material are created based on their sales requirement.  As per your say above, when SGP view is created system would also create an entry in MLAN table for country based on the plant customization and the classification values are all initial/blank.  But why would we need to create this entry in MLAN? How would it help for any transactions? One can create a Sales Order for that material only if that material is extended to a Sales Org and that is when tax data in MLAN would be useful and not when SGP view is created.

My assertion is that when SGP view is being created no entry in MLAN should be created. Only when Sales Org view is being created the entries in MLAN should be populated with the data provided in MM01/MM02.

3. What would go wrong if the MLAN entry is not created when SGP view is saved in MM01?

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

You are breaking your head for nothing really important, it is the SAP design that this table entry is created, even it stays empty for a while, you will not change this program design. Uploading a single picture as attachment may eat more space than 10000 MLAN records.

You probably know that the tax classification is mandatory, so if you touch the sales view where you maintain the tax classification then you can't leave the view without maintaining it if you want save your work.

Contrary the tax indicator at purchasing view is not mandatory in standard, but if you maintain a value then it is updated in the very same MLAN record that holds your SD tax classification.

What sense does a Sales general plant view make if you do not want to extend the material for the other sales views?

What goes wrong if the MLAN record exists empty?