The purchasing organization is an organizational unit which procures articles and negotiates general purchase price conditions with vendors. It is responsible for all purchasing transactions in the company.

A purchasing transaction is processed completely by one single purchasing organization. Authorizations to maintain master data and process purchasing transactions are assigned per purchasing organization.

The purchasing organization is used in the following areas:

• When a stock transport order (order type UB) is created, all the sites (stores) ordering together must belong to the same company code. This company code must also be the one defined for the purchasing organization specified.

• In standard purchase orders (order type NB) the system also checks whether the ordering purchasing organization is assigned to the vendor. This is important for purchase price determination, for example.
• Similar checks take place for outline agreements (contracts, scheduling agreements).
• Because promotions and allocation tables can be used to generate purchase orders, purchasing organizations play a role in these areas, too. Promotions need purchasing organizations for supply source determination and price maintenance functions; they are used in allocation table functions for scheduling (determining the latest possible purchase order date), for example.
• In a request for quotation issued to the vendor, the purchasing organization invites a vendor assigned to it to submit a quotation.

Purchasing organizations are data retention levels for many types of master data.

One (and only one) company code can be assigned to a purchasing organization. A purchasing organization that has been assigned a company code can only buy for sites that belong to that company code. If the purchasing organization is to be responsible for sites that do not all belong to the same company code, no company code should be assigned to that purchasing organization. This is especially important to bear in mind if the ordering site and the supplying site for a warehouse order or return delivery are assigned the same purchasing organization but these sites belong to different company codes.

A site can be assigned to the purchasing organization that orders for it in site maintenance. This standard (default) purchasing organization for a site can be changed both in site maintenance and via Customizing. When the source of supply is determined for the purposes of a stock transfer or consignment, the default purchasing organization is used automatically. Further purchasing organizations can be assigned to the site in addition to the default. A site cannot order if it has not been assigned to a purchasing organization.

A sales organization can be assigned a purchasing organization for statistical purposes. If this assignment is made and the sales organization is then assigned to a site in site maintenance, the default purchasing organization for the site must be the one that has been assigned to the sales organization.

In Customizing it is possible to assign reference purchasing organizations to a purchasing organization. This allows the purchasing organization access to the conditions and contracts of these reference purchasing organizations. The purchasing organization can make use of up to two reference purchasing organizations when the sequence in which it accesses conditions is determined.

Vendors are assigned a purchasing organization in the purchasing-related data in the vendor master (purchasing organization vendor).This enables the purchasing organization to order from this vendor. A vendor can supply more than one purchasing organization. Purchasing organization-specific purchasing info records can only be created if corresponding table entries exist. The system also uses the purchasing organization for vendor analyses and for vendor evaluation.

In purchase price determination, a purchasing organization can be assigned a schema group. This, together with the schema group of the vendor, determines the calculation schema for Purchasing. A purchasing organization can also be assigned a market price schema, which allows the average market price of an article to be maintained (for the purposes of rating a vendor’s price history). In addition, it is possible to process in the system any delivery costs that may arise in connection with a stock transport order. The calculation schema for this is determined via the schema group for the purchasing organization, the purchasing document type and the supplying site.