Maintain purchasing organization

In this step, you set up your purchasing organizations.

From the Materials Management and Purchasing view, the purchasing organization is responsible for all purchasing activities (including the processing of requests for quotations and purchase orders, for example).

The purchasing organization is integrated within the organizational structure as follows:

• A purchasing organization can be assigned to several company codes.
  (= Corporate-group-wide purchasing).

• A purchasing organization can be assigned to one company code.
  (= Company-specific purchasing).

• A purchasing organization can also exist without being assigned to a company code.

• A purchasing organization must be assigned to one or more plants.
  (= Plant-specific purchasing).

• A purchasing organization can be linked to one or more other purchasing organizations.
  (=
  reference purchasing organization)
  For more on this topic, refer to
  Assign Purchasing Organization to Reference Purchasing Organization.

• A purchasing organization can be divided into several purchasing groups that are responsible for different operational areas.

• Each purchasing organization has its own info records and conditions for pricing.

• Each purchasing organization has its own vendor master data.

• Each purchasing organization evaluates its own vendors using MM Vendor Evaluation.

• Authorizations for processing purchasing transactions can be assigned to each purchasing organization.

• All items of an external purchasing document, that is, request for quotation, purchase order, contract, or scheduling agreement, belong to a purchasing organization.

• The purchasing organization is the highest level of aggregation (after the organizational unit "client") for purchasing statistics.

• The purchasing organization serves as the selection criterion for lists of all purchasing documents.

Possible organizational forms

You can organize your purchasing function in the following ways:

• Corporate-group-wide purchasing

• Company-specific purchasing

• Plant-specific purchasing

All of these forms can co-exist within a single client.

Corporate-group-wide purchasing:

A purchasing organization is responsible for the purchasing activities of different company codes.
In this case, you do not assign a company code to the purchasing organization, but specify the company code concerned for each individual purchasing transaction. You assign plants from different company codes to the purchasing organization.

Company-specific purchasing:

A purchasing organization is responsible for the purchasing activities of just one company code.
In this case, you assign a company code to the purchasing organization. The purchasing organization may procure only for this company code. You assign only plants of the company code concerned to the purchasing organization.

Plant-specific purchasing:

A purchasing organization is responsible for the purchasing activities of one plant.
In this case, you assign the plant and the company code of the plant to the purchasing organization. The purchasing organization may procure for this plant only.

Note

If you wish to work with a mixture of the above organizational forms, the reference purchasing organization is of significance to you.
It is possible to allow one purchasing organization to access the contracts and conditions of another - a so-called reference purchasing organization. This makes it possible for advantageous terms negotiated by one purchasing organization to also be used by other purchasing organizations.

Recommendation

Purchasing organization 0001 is already preset in all dependent tables.

SAP recommends that you retain this number if you require only one purchasing organization.

You will then have to customize only a few tables.

Activities

Create your purchasing organizations.