Third-Party Order Handling 
Purpose
The customer orders products that your company does not produce, or does not stock in the warehouse. Instead, you can generate a purchase requisition from the appropriate sales order, which you can then use to procure the materials for the customer.
The vendor delivers to the customer directly. The customer billing document can either be based on the shipping notification or the vendor‘s incoming invoice.
Prerequisites
The following R/3 components are integrated into third-party order processing:
SAP Component |
Functions |
Sales |
Customer inquiries and quotations, sales order processing |
Purchasing |
Creating purchase requisitions, creating and sending purchase orders/contract release orders |
Inventory Management |
Entering the goods receipt at the customer for statistical purposes (optional) |
Invoice Verification |
Post invoice and arrange payment |
Credit and risk management |
Credit limit checks, guarantees for open receivables |
Billing |
Invoice verification |
Information system |
Planning, forecasts, and statistics |
This scenario is linked to third-party requisition processing via an interface.
Process Flow
Customer Inquiries and Quotations
You can enter a customer’s request for general product information (for example, product descriptions, availability) using an inquiry.
You send the exact and binding product information (for example, prices, delivery dates) to the customer in the form of a quotation. A valid quotation that has been accepted by the customer can then be converted into a sales order.
Use for a sales order
A sales order is a short-term agreement for delivering products to a customer. The following functions are available:
- Costing and pricing
- Purchase requisitions for procuring the material requested by the customer
- Delivery scheduling
- Credit limit check
- Export control
- Credit and risk management
Credit and risk management
In credit management you can run static or dynamic checks on credit limits at different stages in sales order processing (for example, in the order, the delivery or at goods issue).
Risk Management provides additional procedures for guaranteeing against credit risk, such as documentary payments, payment cards or export credit insurance.
Purchase Requisition
Third-party procurement starts with the creation of a purchase requisition:
- In sales order processing in SD, the system is able to create purchase requisitions automatically.
- When requirements exist in other areas of the company, purchase requisitions have to be created manually by the user.
Purchasing
Once they have been created, you can assign requisitions to a source of supply, taking previous purchase orders or contracts into account in the process. If no suitable source of supply exists, you must:
- Issue requests for quotation to potential vendors
- Compare the quotations you receive in response
- Assign the purchase requisition to one of the quotations received
If required, the vendor must have been approved by Quality Management.
- Purchase requisitions to which a release strategy has been assigned must be released (approved) before they can be converted to purchase orders, contract release orders or scheduling agreement (SA) delivery schedules.
- Depending on the source of supply, you create and transmit one of the following documents:
- Purchase orders
- contract release order
- Purchase orders subject to release strategies must be released before they can be sent to the vendor.
- You monitor the order. The system is able to automatically print urging letters for you to send to the vendor, as required. This is only the case if you work with goods receipts.
- You can maintain order acknowledgments for purchase orders or delivery schedules. These enable precise planning, as you always have reliable information on expected deliveries in the period between ordering goods and the requested delivery date. Shipping notifications can be referenced at the time of goods receipt, allowing you to identify and investigate any quantity variances in good time.
Goods Receipt
As soon as the goods arrive at the customer, you can post a goods receipt for statistical purposes to consumption, provided the item category S is configured to allow this.
Invoice Verification
When the invoice from the vendor arrives, you enter the invoice for the third-party order. The invoice is entered as if it were a standard purchase order.
If you entered a goods receipt for the purchase order for statistical purposes, the GR/IR clearing account is cleared when the invoice is posted.
Billing
Invoices are created using the vendor’s incoming invoice or shipping notification. Billing plans are used for periodic or milestone billing. Once a billing document has been created, the values are posted to the relevant financial and cost accounting accounts.
You can use an invoice list to send a list of billing documents due on one date to the payer.
Information system
The information system helps you in planning, forecasts, and analyses. It uses master data and any transaction data that may result from the business processes for its evaluations.
Result
The following scenarios may also be of use to you for third-party order handling:
Presales Handling
Returnables/Empties Handling
Foreign Trade Handling
Complaints Handling