Changing existing article and merchandise category assignments within merchandise categories is referred to as 'reclassification'. Changes are necessary for the following reasons:

• Articles were accidentally assigned to incorrect merchandise categories when they were created.

• Articles identified as being 'specialties' in a merchandise category should be assigned to a suitable merchandise category. For example, high-quality cheeses in the Dairy products merchandise category might be reassigned to a new Specialties merchandise category.

• A merchandise category or merchandise category hierarchy level that is too large and no longer manageable is to be split in two. Some articles or merchandise categories in the old hierarchy level are reassigned to the new one.

• Object restructuring has been prompted by efforts towards ECR (Efficient Consumer Response) or the introduction of Category Management.

The reclassification function allows you to change your merchandise category hierarchy, including the objects assigned to the hierarchy (articles and variants). In doing so, you can also change or adjust current documents, statistics, and other dependent objects. This is a particularly useful tool in Category Management and ECR.

You can use the reclassification function to do the following:

• Reclassification of articles

• Reclassification of merchandise categories

• Reclassification of merchandise category hierarchy nodes

You can only use this function for articles that were created using article master maintenance in SAP Retail.

Reclassification is, however, only possible if certain system checks have been made. The following article categories can be reclassified:

• Single articles
• Generic articles with variants
• Structured articles
• Prepacks, displays, sets

The following constraints exist:

• Historical data is never changed automatically, not even in the Information System.

• Neighboring systems and their documents (for example, FI, CO, HR) are not changed and therefore remain unaffected by the reclassification process.

• Conditions that have been defined for source and/or target objects remain entirely unchanged. A condition that has been defined for a merchandise category, for example, will continue to apply for all the articles in this merchandise category. So if an article is moved to a different merchandise category, it will be subject to the condition already defined for this target merchandise category.

• Completed purchase orders and/or purchase order items (including the document archive) are not changed.

• The level of an object in the hierarchy must be the same in the target as in the source. So a merchandise category, for example, cannot become a hierarchy node or a characteristics profile when it is moved.

The SAP System runs the following checks and conversions during the reclassification process:

• An article can be moved directly from a characteristics profile in the source to a merchandise category in the target because the significance of the article in the hierarchy does not change. The reassignment is, of course, still subject to other checks. The source characteristics profile is treated as a merchandise category for the purposes of this reassignment.

• The characteristics defined in the source must already have been defined in the target too. So a merchandise category with the characteristic "color", for example, cannot be moved to a position beneath a target hierarchy level which only contains or inherits the characteristic "size".

• The characteristic values in the source must be defined in the target in full. So a merchandise category with the characteristic "color" and the values "red", "green" and "yellow", for example, cannot be moved to a position beneath a target hierarchy level which only allows the values "black" and "white", even though the characteristic is also "color".

• If a value-only article is defined in a source merchandise category, then there must be one in the target too. The value-only article, at the level of which stocks are managed, should not be different in source and target. So reclassifications which do not affect inventory management do not pose a problem in this respect. The stocks should be transfer-posted (with physical inventory) before reclassification takes place.

The system performs the following tests and adjustments:

• Reassignments between objects in the merchandise category hierarchy

• The assignment of articles to merchandise categories

• The assignment of open purchase order items to merchandise categories, if necessary

• Adjustments to assortment module assignments

• Adjustments to value-only articles in merchandise category hierarchies

Your SAP System offers you the following functions for reclassification: