Basic Inbound PRICAT Processing 

Use

This procedure allows you to process incoming PRICAT messages, add or change the data as necessary, and post the data to your system.

Prerequisites

·        You have decided to use transaction PRICAT and not transaction W_PRICAT_MAINTAIN. For more information, see Inbound Processing of PRICAT Messages.

·        You have assigned the ILN numbers in the PRICAT message to SAP vendors and purchasing groups, and maintained the history for the vendor catalogs.

To do this, on the SAP Easy Access menu for Retail, choose Master Data ® Article ® Environment ® Article Maintenance from Price Catalog ® Utilities ® Settings ® Assign ILN to SAP Vendor/Purch. Group (transaction PRICATCUS1).

Optionally, you can enter an SAP vendor number. If you do not make an entry, the system determines the vendor based on the ILN, in which case the ILN must be assigned to only one vendor.

Enter a purchasing group.

Choose the settings you want for the catalog history.

·        Optionally, you can assign the merchandise categories in the PRICAT message to the corresponding SAP merchandise categories.

To do this, on the SAP Easy Access menu for Retail, choose Master Data ® Article ® Environment ® Article Maintenance from Price Catalog ® Utilities ® Settings ® Assign Merchandise Category to SAP Merchandise Categories (transaction PRICATCUS2).

·        Optionally, you can assign purchasing groups to selected merchandise categories.

To do this, on the SAP Easy Access menu for Retail, choose Master Data ® Article ® Environment ® Article Maintenance from Price Catalog ® Utilities ® Settings ® Assign Purchasing Group to SAP Merchandise Categories(transaction PRICATCUS3).

Procedure

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       1.      On the SAP Easy Access menu for Retail, choose Master Data ® Article Data ® Environment ® Article Maintenance from Price Catalog (transaction PRICAT).

       2.      Enter the internal catalog number (if known), or specify that the system is to determine the catalog using the vendor number, catalog description and test indicator.

       3.      To maintain catalog header data, choose Catalog data. The header data contains information about the sender and receiver, plus general message data.

A catalog can have one of the following statuses:

¡        Open: The catalog contains items that have not yet been maintained.

¡        Processed: No additional maintenance is required. This status must be set manually once you have finished processing the data. Once the catalog is updated, the status is reset to Open.

¡        Closed: You can display the contents but you cannot make any changes. You cannot update a closed catalog. This status is also set manually.

In addition, there is a test indicator to specify that only test data is involved. Test data can only be displayed, it cannot be maintained.

       4.      To process items, choose Goto ® Article List. To restrict the number of catalog items to be displayed, you can enter purchasing groups and product groups. If you want to maintain data and not just display it, you must enter a purchasing group.

The system displays all the items that must be maintained for the selected catalog.

Items can have one of the following statuses:

¡        To Process: New items have this status.

¡        Processed: An article master record has been created for these items.

¡        Excluded: Manual maintenance is deactivated with this setting. Items with this status do not appear in the worklist for the purchasing group.

You can change the status of the individual items manually, or assign items to other purchasing groups.

       5.      Choose Process Items.

If an article is not yet assigned to an item, the Assign Catalog Item to an Article screen appears. You can change this assignment at any time afterwards. However, data that has already been entered may be lost.

If an article has not yet been created, you must enter a reference article. The system copies data from the reference article to fill the fields that are not provided with the PRICAT message.

       6.      From the PRICAT message, select the fields to be transferred to the system. To do this, choose Copy Value for each field required.

If a transfer profile for a specific combination of vendor and user already exists in the system, you do not need to select the fields. The appropriate fields are selected automatically.

The following settings exist for transfer profiles:

·         Always Use Transfer Profile: The profile is used automatically. No action is required.

·         Always Ask: An appropriate dialog box appears.

·         Never Use Transfer Profile: The profile is not used automatically. If you do still want to use the profile, choose Utilities ® Transfer Profile ® Load.

To maintain the profile yourself, choose Utilities ® Transfer Profile.

       7.      Choose Copy Selected Values to activate the data transfer. Repeat this procedure for each screen.

       8.      The system now tries to align the units of measure from the reference article with the units of measure from the PRICAT message. However, if necessary, you must add or change values manually. Proceed as follows:

                            a.      Choose Units of Measure.

                            b.      Choose Assign EAN unit of measure (or simply double-click on the EAN line).

                            c.      Enter the appropriate standard unit of measure in the dialog box that appears.

       9.      Like items, units of measure within the catalog also have a specific status. This status is saved automatically when the article is posted. However, you can save it manually by choosing Article Items ® Save Units of Measure Status.

Posting can be controlled with item status to ensure that only units of measure with the status UoM is Open are posted to the system. You can suppress posting for a specific unit of measure by changing the status to UoM is Processed.

To make more changes to a unit of measure, select it from the table and then choose Display <-> Change.

   10.      You can maintain texts for an article in different languages. Choose Copy Texts to import the texts. You can then change the texts as necessary, or delete certain texts which should not be copied to the article master data.

   11.      Choose Copy Components to import BOM components from the price catalog. You can assign the components to the corresponding articles in the dialog box that appears.

You can only change the BOM within integrated article maintenance.

Characteristics (for generic articles), prices, conditions, and taxes cannot be posted automatically.

Result

The article master records are updated and/or new records are created.