Shipping Point Determination 

Shipping points are independent organizational entities within which processing and monitoring of the deliveries as well as goods issue is carried out. A delivery is processed by one shipping point only.

Criteria for Proposing a Shipping Point

A shipping point can be determined for each order item. How the shipping point is determined depends on three factors:

For example, it might have been agreed with the customer that the goods are to be delivered as soon as possible.

You could, for example, specify a loading group that defines that the goods must always be loaded with a crane or a forklift.

This plant is determined per order item either from the customer master record or from the material master record. However, you can also enter it manually for each order item. For more information on determining the delivering plant, refer to the section Data From Master Records

The following figure shows how the shipping point is determined using the data listed above.

On the basis of shipping condition 01, the loading group CRANE and the plant 0001, the system determines shipping point 0001 for the item. Instead of this shipping point, you can also select shipping points 0002 and 0003 if, for example, you know that shipping point 0001 is out of operation or does not have the capacity to deal with the item at the time when delivery is to take place.

Changing a Shipping Point

You are still able to change the shipping point proposed by the system in the sales order within specified limits. If you enter a shipping point that is not valid, you will receive the following error message from the system: "Shipping point is not available for this activity."

If the shipping point cannot be determined because, for example, the delivering plant could not be found in the sales order, an entry is made in the incompletion log in the standard version of the SAP R/3 System. This ensures that the shipping point is entered before the sales order can be processed for delivery.

You can obtain an overview of the shipping points for all order items by choosing Overview ® Shipping in the sales order. You will find the shipping points in the ShPt column.

If you enter a delivery for the sales order, you must always specify the shipping point from which the sales order is to be delivered. The shipping point cannot be changed in the delivery.

Delivery by a Shipping Point

You can only carry out delivery processing for the items in a sales order for which a shipping point has been defined. If different shipping points have been assigned to the various items in a sales order, the deliveries have to be processed for each shipping point.

If you create a delivery for a sales order that contains several shipping points, the system reacts as follows:

You can view the log by choosing Edit ® Log.

If the customer requests complete delivery of the sales order, it does not make sense to define different shipping points for the order items since this would lead to the sales order being split into several deliveries.