When you use Merchandise Distribution, you can have the system automatically generate additional items, such as:

• Components of a structured article (such as components of a prepack or display)
• Empties components
• Items for free-goods discounts

The constituent components of structured articles and the empties components for a full product are recorded in bills of material. These bills of material can only have one level, that is, all the components have to be directly assigned to the bill of material header.

In recipient-related documents (such as warehouse orders or sales orders), you can configure the system so that it automatically adds items for the components for structured articles. In processing a distribution, you deal with either the header article only or the constituent components only of a structured article, that is, the data contains either the header article or the components.

You have to trigger adjustment of the distribution manually. If you deal with the header article, the following is relevant for generated deliveries:

• The header article only is adopted in deliveries for warehouse orders.
• The header article and also the components are adopted in deliveries for sales orders.

In purchase orders, sales orders and deliveries, you can configure the system so that it automatically adds items for tied empties components. Only full products are contained in distribution data, which means that only the full-product article is involved in the distribution (for example, when you use a distribution order). You have to trigger adjustment of the distribution manually. You can configure the system so that the tied components are listed in the deliveries.

If free-goods items exist for a vendor order item (for example, in a collective purchase order), these are not listed in the distribution data. The main item only is taken into account in the processing of the distribution.

Sales orders items for structured articles or full products are only adopted in collective purchase orders if:

• The items are relevant for delivery
• Schedule lines relevant to Inventory Management exist

A header article is only taken into account if all the components are contained in a delivery group. This is also the case for bills of material for empties. If, on the other hand, only the components are taken into account and not the header article, no delivery group containing these is allowed. You can configure how the system combines bills of material items in delivery groups via the items category control parameters for Sales.

Neither the automatic adjustment of distribution data at goods receipt nor the automatic adjustment of follow-on documents at goods receipt is supported for bills of material.