Delivery Times/Commitment Dates in Sales Orders (SAP Library

Delivery Times/Commitment Dates in Sales Orders

Use

You can enter a delivery time in contracts and quotations.

In the contract, the delivery time fixes the time period that the customer has given the vendor between contract release and delivery receipt.

In quotations, the delivery times enables you to agree on a guaranteed maximum delivery time once the order has been entered.

In the sales order, a committed quantity and date are issued alongside the confirmed quantity calculated by the availability check, which enables you to see whether committed quantities and delivery dates have been complied with.

These new functions are particularly useful if you are working with contracts and are expecting bottlenecks and where obligatory agreements on dates have to be met. Above all, they are suitable for the high tech and chemical industries as well as those branches of industry with customer make-to-order production.

Features

You can specify the delivery time at header level and this influences the delivery times for all items in a quotation or contract but you can also enter different delivery times for single items at item level.

Enter the delivery time at header level in the Delivery time field on the Sales tab page for the overview screen. Enter the delivery time at item level in the item table in the DlyTime field.
You can configure possible delivery times in Customizing by going to Sales and Distribution ® Sales ® Sales Documents ® Define agreed delivery times.

When you create a sales order with reference to a contract or quotation the system copies the delivery time into the sales order item. If you do not enter a delivery, nothing changes in sales processing.

Commitment Dates in the Sales Order

In the schedule line screen for the sales order items there are fields for the committed quantities and dates.
In a normal sales order, the commitment date results from the first availability check. If a second availability check results in different data, you can compare the two to see if the availability situation for a sales order item has improved or deteriorated.

The commitment date is calculated using the delivery time in contract releases with a delivery time, or in sales orders that refer to a quotation with a delivery time. The committed quantity is calculated from the agreed delivery time or from the confirmed quantity, according to the settings you made in Customizing. If you change the material, quantity, delivery date or delivery time in the sales order, the system recalculates the committed quantity.

You can configure how the commitment dates are calculated in Customizing for the sales document type in the Commitment date field. You can choose one of the following rules:

A: Consider agreed delivery time only
Here, all the required schedule lines are committed for the date that follows the delivery time at the distance agreed on when you entered the sales order. If the customer requires a later date, this date is confirmed. The commitment situation does not influence the calculations and if you don’t specify a delivery time, the system does not calculate any committed quantities.
B: Calculation after the first confirmation date
The committed quantity is calculated from the first commitment situation. If a delivery time is available for the item, the system takes it into account in calculation rule A and the system commits the quantity for the earlier date. If you change the material, quantity, delivery date or delivery time in the sales order, the system recalculates the committed quantity. In each case the current commitment situation is valid when you save the document.
C: Calculation after the first confirmation date
If you enter new items, rule C corresponds to rule B. If you save the document again and the customer’s commitment situation has improved, the system saves the better situation as the committed one. As in calculation rule B, the system recalculates the commitment dates if you change the material, quantity, requested delivery date or delivery time.
No entry: The system does not calculate or display commitment dates.

The committed delivery date is issued in the order confirmation and the agreed delivery time is included in the printout of the contracts and quotations.

Delayed Sales Order Indicator

There is a status field for the sales order header and items that specifies whether the availability check has covered the commitment for undelivered order quantities. If you choose matchcode M, you can display all sales documents that have the "delayed" status. A delayed sales order is one where the committed quantities could not be either completely or partially committed, or where the quantity will be not be confirmed as committed until a later date.