Allocation: Notifications
Use
Notifications are used to exchange data between the head office and stores and between head office and distribution centers. These contain information about the stock split, including the articles, quantities and delivery dates and other information.
Prerequisites
The type of notification (and other types of information associated with this) is determined by the notification category for each allocation table item or for each site within an item. The notification category controls the transfer of individual information. You can also have the system not transfer individual data fields (this is set in Customizing).
Features
Notification Categories
The sites are sent information on the articles to be allocated, the quantities allocated and delivery dates.
A request notification is a allocation table notification requiring the sites to reply to the head office and confirm the quantities allocated to them or request different quantities. If a request notification is created, you can configure your system so that follow-on documents can only be generated for the allocation table type after the quantities requested by the sites and those confirmed by the head office have been entered in the allocation table.
A confirmation notification is a reply sent by the head office as an answer to the quantities requested by the sites. It informs the sites about the "final" quantities, as the requested quantities may be changed in the head office.
Distribution centers are sent information on planned goods receipts. The list they receive contains the total planned quantities of an article for all sites and the planned goods receipt date in the distribution center.
Scope of Functions
When creating notifications, you can combine the information from all the relevant allocation tables for a particular recipient in the one notification. Alternatively, you can create a separate notification based on the following criteria:
Sending
Notifications can either be printed, faxed or sent by EDI. The standard system contains the IDoc WALNOT01 for transferring notification information by EDI. Message determination: When you create condition records for message determination, you must enter the value "8" (print output) as the transmission medium. Recipients can report the quantities they request using IDoc WALREQ01.
If you use SAP Retail Store in your sites, you have a link to the central R/3 system and can thus display allocation data for each individual site. Since no notification has to be sent to the site in this case, you can deactivate message determination in Customizing for each notification category to improve performance.
Every time each of the above notifications is changed, the system creates a change notification. This contains information about subsequent changes, for example, new quantities, delivery dates or additional articles. A change notification only contains information on the allocation table items that have actually changed.