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 Configurable Materials in Sales Documents

Use

Configurable materials are complex products that can produced in different variants. For example, cars have different paintwork and different-sized engines. You use characteristics to describe configurable materials.

There are different ways of processing configurable materials in sales documents. These processing options are described in the following scenarios:

You can configure configurable materials in quotations and sales orders. You can copy the configuration from a quotation to a sales order.

Prerequisites

Before you can configure a material in a sales document, the following prerequisites must be fulfilled:

Settings for Variant Configuration

  • You have created the material with a material type that supports variant configuration or defined the material as configurable in its material master record.

    You have created sales data in the material master of the material (see Material Master Data for Configurable Materials ).

  • You have assigned characteristics to the material by allocating the material to a variant class (see Classification ).

  • You have created a configuration profile for the material, containing at least the configuration parameters that are essential for controlling processing in sales documents (see The Configuration Profile ).

  • You have created dependencies and allocated these to characteristics and characteristic values, to define the dependencies between characteristics and values.

    When you configure a material, some characteristic values tend to be mutually exclusive. This may be for technical reasons (for example, certain engines can only use a certain type of transmission) or for marketing reasons (for example, leather covers are only available with more expensive models). See Object Dependencies .

  • You have created selection conditions and allocated these to items in BOMs and operations in routings. Selection conditions ensure that the system selects the items and operations you need to produce your variant (see Selection Conditions ).

Settings in the Sales

  • The item category of the order item must allow configuration. In Customizing for Sales and Distribution, the correct indicator must be set for the item categories in the Structure scope field.

    The item category group entered in the material master controls which item categories can be assigned.

  • The Configuration allowed or required indicator must be set for the requirements class in Customizing for Sales and Distribution.

    The requirements class is determined using the strategy group and requirements type defined in the material master.

Process Flow

  1. If you enter a configurable material on the item entry screen, then confirm, you see the configuration editor with the characteristics of the configurable material. You configure the material by assigning values to the characteristics (refer to Configuring Objects ).

  2. Once you have finished configuring the configuration structure, go back to the sales document.

  3. You see the result of the availability check. This tells you whether the requested delivery date is feasible. If possible, the system offers a delivery proposal (see the SAP Library Start of the navigation path Sales Next navigation step Availability Check and Requirements in Sales and Distribution Processing Next navigation step Availability Check in Sales and Distribution Processing Next navigation step Working with the Availability Check in Sales and Distribution Processing Next navigation step Reactions to the Availability Check in Sales Documents). End of the navigation path

    Confirm a delivery date or select Continue.

  4. You see the order item overview screen again.

  5. You can continue processing the sales order.

  6. Once you have finished processing, save your sales order.

Result

The configuration of the material is saved with the sales order. Customer requirements are transferred to MRP.