Sales & Operations Planning (SOP) allows you to plan the same information structure as often as you like. You store each planning version under a version number with a description. This means you can construct different planning scenarios for one information structure. For example, you might plan your data several times using different forecasting techniques or with the exclusion and inclusion of events you expect to happen in the future.

A version number is numerical and consists of three digits.

Only one planning version of an information structure is "active". This is version A00. All the other planning versions are "inactive". The version of the information structure that contains actual as opposed to planned data is version 000.

A version is automatically active if it is the only planning version that exists for an information structure. If several versions exist, the active version is the first one you created unless you have copied data from an inactive version to the active version (see below). The active version contains the version of your planning data that you wish to be regarded as valid, whereas you use inactive versions as test versions to try out different scenarios.

You can copy any version of an information structure to any other version of the same information structure. A series of pushbuttons supports your choice of version. You can limit the scope of the planning horizon for which the data is to be copied.

To copy data between versions of different information structures, you use a different transaction.

To activate a planning version, you copy its data to version A00. This overwrites any existing data in A00, so if you want to keep this data you should copy it to another version first.

A facility for deleting versions is also available.