Catalog Sales 

Use

In sales orders, you normally enter the SAP article number for the product being purchased. For mail order catalog sales, however, you may have article order numbers (item numbers) that are associated with specific product catalogs. For example, the system can add the catalog code (source code or product catalog identifier) to the article number according to certain algorithms. This way you can track which catalog, or which pages within a given catalog, generated the sales order.

In Sales Order Processing, these article order numbers are treated exactly like normal article numbers in the master data. The customer gives the article order number, and the system automatically determines the catalog from which it came.

You can enter either a catalog number or its code at the header level of the sales order. This records what prompted the customer's order (the impulse to buy).

You can also enter a catalog number or code at the line item level. If you leave it blank and just enter an article order number, the system will search for the article in the catalog entered at the header level. If the article is not in that catalog, or if no catalog was entered at the header level, then the system will look in the most recent catalog.

Item lines within a sales order can be from different catalogs.

Statistics are kept on catalog and article revenue:

·         Catalog data at the header level allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of a catalog; that is, how much total revenue the catalog generated for all merchandise within it. (one catalog, many articles)

·         Catalog data at the item level allow you to accumulate total sales revenue for an article in all catalogs in which it appears (one article, many catalogs)

·         If an article appears multiple times within a single catalog with a different article order number each time, you can compare revenues generated for a single article based on where it appeared in the catalog. (one catalog, one article appearing several times).

For more information on article order numbers and how they are generated, see Catalog Codes and Article Order Numbers.

Prerequisites

If you want to use article order numbers rather than article numbers, you must first change Customizing settings for sales documents. For each sales document type, you can choose whether sales orders are to use the SAP article number or the article order number.