Condition Contract 

Definition

The condition contract is a document with which you can record conditions that a partner (usually a vendor) grants to a limited group of eligible partners (usually customers). A special characteristic of the condition contract is the list of eligible partners. This list contains only the partners and no conditions.

Use

If an external partner (usually your vendor) grants special conditions to a limited group of eligible partners (usually customers), you can record these using a condition contract. The condition contract bundles all information that concerns the agreement such as the condition granter or owner of the condition contract, the list of eligible partners, and the special conditions such as discounts or prices. A pricing extension ensures that the special conditions are only found for the eligible partners listed in the condition contract.

For the definition of lists of eligible partners, condition contracts with special settings are used – and these only enable eligible partners to be entered. Specification of owners and conditions is not possible. In other condition contracts, you can specify lists of eligible partners rather than individual eligible partners. This has the same effect as if you entered all the eligible partners individually. Combining lists of eligible partners to form new lists is not supported.

The condition tables maintained by a condition contract must contain the condition contract number in the access. This number is used to ensure that the conditions are granted only to partners who are eligible for the condition contract.

Structure

A condition contract consists of the following components:

·        Condition contract header:

The condition contract header contains the owner of the condition contract, a validity interval, the document status, currency information, exchange rate, terms of payment, purchasing organization and sales area.

The document status determines both the validity of the condition contract, the changeability of the document and its archivability. The status is set by means of the general SAP Status Management. This supports the definition of your own user statuses.

·        List of eligible partners:

Contains the customers or vendors who are entitled to use the condition contract. A validity interval defines for which period the contract applies. When new eligible partners are created, they are not immediately released (field Release Status) but must be activated so that they belong to the condition contract and the conditions are valid for them. In place of an eligible partner, you can specify an eligible partner’s number. Then all the partners you have specified as eligible are treated as belonging to the contract. Note that the validity intervals of the eligible partners in the list, the validity interval of the list header, and the validity interval at eligible partner level are evaluated the same way. Using the indicator Filter Out, you can exclude eligible partners from lists. Filtering globally affects all the condition contract lists. The eligible partner removed from the lists can be specified individually with a validity interval in the condition contract. When filtering, you cannot specify a date.

·        Conditions:

For each condition table that is assigned to a condition contract, you can record condition records. These apply for all eligible partners of the condition contract. The key of a condition record consists of the condition type, the fields (dependent on the condition table) of the access, and the validity interval. Once data has been entered, these fields can no longer be changed. The calculation rule defines how the system calculates prices, surcharges or discounts for a condition. Depending on the calculation rule, the condition amount is entered either as a monetary amount or as a percentage. In the first case, the condition currency, price unit, and quantity unit must also be entered. With a percentage condition, the condition currency must equal %.

Integration

In a chargeback situation, the condition contract provides the vendor/purchasing-specific information required to generate a chargeback. In this use, the condition contract owner is a vendor and the chargeback request is addressed to this owner. The currency of the chargeback request, its exchange rate, and the purchasing organization are determined in this scenario by the relevant values in the condition contract. The validity interval of the condition contract is evaluated during pricing (for example, of the sales order and the sales invoice). Only if the pricing date lies within the validity interval of the condition contract, both contract and eligible partner have been released, and the pricing date lies within the validity interval of the eligible partner, are the conditions found. The distribution channel is used when searching for condition contracts from sales orders and sales invoices in the chargeback scenario. If a distribution channel is specified in the condition contract, it must match the distribution channel in the documents mentioned above.

Example

A pharmaceutical company grants discounts and special prices to a group of hospitals for a range of medicines. A wholesaler must grant these special conditions whenever one of these hospitals places and order. Since the wholesaler has obtained the medicines from the manufacturer at the standard price, the manufacturer must refund part of the purchase price to the wholesaler if the latter has sold them at special conditions. In order to secure these special conditions, the wholesaler employs the condition contract. At header level, the pharmaceutical company is specified as the owner/vendor. Information relevant for settlement such as terms of payment, purchasing organization, settlement currency and exchange rates are also saved in the contract header. The eligible hospitals are either listed separately within the contract or are defined as an eligible partner list externally and included as a list. The special prices and/or discounts are defined in the conditions area of the condition contract. The period of time for which the agreement is valid is defined in the condition contract validity interval. If the special conditions are dependent solely on the type of medicine, you can use condition table A163. This contains, besides the condition contract number, only the material in the access. A release step can follow the document entry, since the conditions are available only after the condition contract is released. Then the special conditions are found in pricing for the sales order and the sales invoice if an eligible hospital has ordered one of the specified medicines. When chargeback requests are created from sales invoices, the missing information such as vendor, purchasing organization, and chargeback currency are determined from the condition contract.