Product Selection in Sales Orders 

Purpose

The system carries out product selection automatically in the sales order when you enter a material for which you have set product selection functions in Customizing.

1. You enter an item and choose Enter.
2. Before performing the standard availability check, the system checks to determine if the product is currently on substitution.

If so, the system uses the requested delivery date in the header to determine a list of possible alternatives.

3. The system runs several checks on on each possible substitute, for example to determine if the customer would accept the product based on the product attributes and current stock availability.The system checks substitute materials until the order quantity is satisfied, or until there are no more possible substitutes.

When a valid alternative is found, the system creates a sub-item for it, using the item category that you have defined for the main material in Customizing.

If there is not enough inventory for the alternatives to cover a required quantity, the system confirms only the available amount and ignores the rest. The main item contains information on the confirmed quantity of the sub-item, but is not relevant for planning. For this reason, the material shortage is not passed on to planning.

If you set the material requirements planning indicator for one of the alternatives, however, the system creates an additional sub-item for this material, assigning it a confirmed quantity equal to zero, and a required quantity equal to the open quantity. Since this material is placed as the final alternative in the substitution, it captures any remaining quantities. The system takes this item into account and passes the material shortage on to planning.

4. Based on your settings Customizing, the system performs pricing at the main or sub-item level.