How to Understand the SAP Sales Order Confirmation

Executive Summary

• Sales orders can be initiated by 3rd party planning software.
• We cover the Shipping Tab and the Partner Function Tab, which allows the 3rd party planning software setup.

Introduction to the Sales Order Confirmation

The sales order confirmation can be initiated externally from SAP. You will learn how to configure this functionality.

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What is the Purpose of the Sales Order Confirmation?

The Sales Order Confirmation is necessary internally to SAP to state that a Sales Order has been created. However, the Sales Order Confirmation takes on particular importance when SAP communicates to planning systems internal to the company and when communicating with suppliers.

• Sales Order (among other types) Confirmations can be sent by e-mail. This is managed in CRM and customized under

Basic Functions>Message Determination>Define Action Profile

• The Sales Order Confirmation is sent directly to the customer after completion of the Purchase Order (created from the Sales Order by MRP)
• Internally, although there is no transaction code, the NAST table can be checked to verify the Sales Order Confirmations.

Sales Orders Initiated by 3rd Party Planning Software

The sales orders in situations where they are initiated by an external planning system do not go through the standard Sales Order workflow, which is:

Standard Process

1. The customer accepts a Quotation and places an order.
2. Sales Order is created with reference to the Quotation.

Non-Standard – Planning System initiated Sales Order

1. Sales Order is created (without reference to a sales order)

This assumes that the planning system either has performed an Availability Check or that the planning system is communicating the sales order at or outside of lead time. The ultimate functionality in terms of confirming sales orders is GATP, which is explained here.

Customer Master for Sales Order Creation

The system can determine the sold to party from the ship to the party.

We use the transaction under a business partner (XD01).

Logistics – Sales and Distribution – Master Data – Business Partner – Customer – Create – Complete

Creating a customer seems like a simple thing but actually takes a massive amount of effort. The customer does not work in a straightforward fashion like the material master. Several buttons must be selected to bring up the right screens, so let us begin from the beginning. As SCM specialists, we want to populate the fields necessary to have a working customer to create demands that are CIFed over to SCM.

We start by selecting the sold to party and entering 0001 Sold to Party. There are many Sold to Parties on the drop down, but we want to select this category.

Next, we want to add in the basic address details.

Next, we will want to select the Company Code Data. We will do that by selecting the Company Code Data selection box at the top.

We will enter the Account Management details, particularly the Reconciliation account and the Sort key.

Next, we will select the Sales Area Data selection box towards the top.

We only need to fill in the Customer group and the Currency on this screen.

The Shipping Tab

Then we go to the shipping tab. This next part is crucial; it sets up the relationship between the customer and the servicing plant. This will make a big difference later when a stock is allocated from a location to the customer.

Then we have to fill in the Tax classification.

The Partner Function Tab

On the Partner Functions tab, you need to find a customer that the system will accept. (300710) works for our ECC box. This is where you set alternative bill to, ship to, and so on. This is supposedly not always required, but it is set as a mandatory configuration item in our ECC sandbox.

This is what allows you to enter a sold to into a sales order and have the bill to, payer, and ship to (as well as other partner functions) auto-populate.

However, this can be a problem because if we place this customer in these partner functions, later we get an error that the Customer Master is not complete or even created. When we try to go back and change these Partner Functions to point to the customer…

…we just created we get this message.

So we go to this path above. This turns out not to be a real path. So we search the SPRO for the Acct grp assignment. This gets us into the topic of partner functions, which we are really not interested in getting into, but we will have to create a customer.

Enter a Sales Order and the Error

Something very perplexing, even after you create a customer when you attempt to enter a sales order to that customer, you get the error that the customer master is not maintained.