Shipping Reason 

Definition

The trigger for starting report shipping. Report shipping is also controlled by the shipping reason. The shipping reason also takes into account the business process for which shipping is triggered. A typical business process is, for example, shipping material safety data sheets (MSDS).

You define the shipping reason and its parameters in Customizing for Product Safety.

Structure

Shipping Reason – Elements

The shipping reason consists of the following elements:

·        Reason

The following reasons for shipping could exist:

¡        Shipping triggered from Sales and Distribution (SD_CALL) if automatic shipping of a material safety data sheet is required

¡        Subsequent shipping (SUB_CALL) if the SAP system has generated a new main version for a report as the result of a relevant change

¡        Manual shipping or print job (MAN_CALL or PRINT_CALL) if you want to react to a customer request directly by e-mail or mail

·        Reason type

The reason type allows you to subdivide the shipping reason more exactly. For shipping triggered by Sales, you can differentiate between triggering by delivery (reason type DELIVERY) and by order (reason type ORDER).

·        Business process

The link to the report category is also made via the business process. The report category is assigned to a report via the corresponding generation variant with which the report was generated. When material safety data sheets are shipped, only those reports whose report category is assigned to the business process Material Safety Data Sheet Shipping in the IMG activity Specify Report Categories are selected as default.

Control Indicator for Shipping Reason

You can define the following indicators depending on the shipping reason:

·        Initial status

The initial status Created specifies that a report shipping order must be released manually before processing it further.

The initial status Released specifies that the report shipping order can be processed immediately.

·        Shipping reason

You can choose whether processing waits until a periodic job is run or whether it starts immediately. Report shipping orders that are generated immediately are always set to the next processing status, independent of their initial status.

You can also control the following:

·        Whether the report shipping order should be taken into account in subsequent shipping

·        Whether the person responsible has to confirm report output

·        Whether the person responsible has to post the acknowledgement of receipt

·        Whether the SAP system has to select the current released report again before generating the report ready for shipping

·        Whether the report shipping orders have to be bundled

·        Whether a cover sheet is to accompany the report

·        Whether an acknowledgement of receipt is to accompany the report

Customizing Settings Dependent on the Shipping Reason

A number of other Customizing settings for report shipping depend on the shipping reason:

·        IMG activity Assign Communication Types

Depending on the shipping reason you can assign communication types. For example, the communication types fax, e-mail, and letter are supported. The communication type can be subdivided more exactly using the communication group.

Depending on the communication types, the routines for bundling, generating, packing, and sending are assigned in the standard system. Whether a number of report shipping orders are actually bundled together does not just depend on the control indicator in the shipping reason, but also on whether the bundling routine is assigned to the communication type that was selected for this shipping reason.

The routines for checking and saving report shipping orders are assigned directly to the shipping reason. The check records the report shipping orders first and then, in a second stage, runs the actual check function.

·        IMG activity Assign Templates: Cover Sheets/Acknowledgements of Receipt

Depending on the shipping reason you can also assign a cover sheet and acknowledgement of receipt. As a selection criterion you can also enter the initiator (sales organization) and the recipient country. In addition, you can specify the cover sheet and acknowledgement of receipt directly for the business process. This assignment is then used for shipping order bundles that contain report shipping orders with different shipping reasons and belong to the business process in question. For the SAP system to output the documents you must have set the appropriate control indicators for the shipping reason.

·        IMG activity Specify Parameter Values to Be Saved (see Saving of Report Shipping Orders)

·        IMG activity Specify Key Date for Shipping

The key date defines the validity date for the report selection and also corresponds to the shipping date.

·        IMG activity Assign Recipient for Error Handling

Depending on the shipping reason, you assign the error code, which is sent to a defined recipient, that is a user in the SAP system, by e-mail. There are a number of different error codes depending on the point in the program where the error occurred.