Creation of Outbound Warranty Claims

Use

During warranty claims processing, an outbound warranty claim can be created manually or automatically from the following transaction types, even for multiple items per claim.

• Service order

• Service confirmation

• Complaint

• Inbound warranty claim

You can also use warranty claim processing separately, without reference to a service order or service confirmation.

The warranty claim is sent to the vendor (manufacturer or supplier, for example). After the vendor has evaluated the claim and sent it back, you can process it further. In other words, you can send any decisions that you do not accept or any corrected warranty claims back to the vendor immediately.

When warranty processing is complete, the system generates an overview of total costs and revenues.

The intended result of this process is a debit memo that is billed to the vendor.

Prerequisites

You have made settings for the process of creating an outbound warranty claim from a complaint or an inbound warranty claim as described in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Transactions  Settings for Service Transactions  Settings for Automatic Creation of Outbound or Inbound Warranty Claims.

Customizing settings for the process of creating an outbound warranty claim from a service order or service confirmation are preset in Customizing in the standard system.

Process

1. Create outbound warranty claim

   You trigger automatic creation of an outbound warranty claim by running the appropriate action in one of the transactions listed above. This action runs a warranty check and if the system finds items for which a vendor warranty exists, it automatically creates an outbound warranty claim as a follow-up transaction.

   Alternatively, you can create an outbound warranty claim manually, either with or without reference to a reference transaction such as a service order.

2. Maintain or verify items copied from reference transaction

   If the warranty claim was generated automatically, verify that the items that were selected automatically are correct.

   If the warranty claim was created manually, either enter the items directly or select them from the reference transaction.

3. Verify and update items

   In the warranty claim item, you check and maintain the information that was copied from the reference transaction, such as time data, counter readings, texts, and quantities.

   The system uses the reference object in the warranty claim to automatically determine the vendor warranty that is relevant for the warranty claim.

4. Update communication status

   You send the completed warranty claim to the vendor and use the communication status to indicate whether the warranty claim was already sent to the vendor for processing (Sent to Supplier) or whether you have already received a response from the vendor (Returned by Supplier).

5. Update acceptance status

   The vendor checks the warranty claim, edits the status of each item as well as other item details such as quantities, values, or texts, and sends the revised transaction back to you, the claimant. If the warranty process is not carried out in a format that is supported by the system (such as by e-mail, fax, or telephone), you must make the vendor's changes yourself.

   You use the acceptance status to record the vendor's response, such as Accepted by Supplier.

6. Create debit memo subitem

   As soon as there is an agreement between the vendor and your company about the reimbursement, you use an action to automatically generate a debit memo subitem for the warranty claim item.

7. Complete and save warranty claim

   You set the status of the warranty claim to Completed and save your changes. You also monitor the status of other existing warranty claims.