This process describes how the R/3 System calculates shipment costs for shipment documents or stages. The system does this using the R/3 condition technique in pricing.

To carry out shipment costing for a shipment document, the following requirements must be met:

• The shipment must be marked as relevant for shipment costing.
• The shipment must have the required total status as set in the definition of the shipment cost type.
• The shipment must have a transportation status of at least planned.
• The shipment must have a service agent.
• Customizing for shipment cost pricing must be set.

• Condition records must be maintained.

Calculating shipment costs involves the following steps:

1. The system determines a pricing procedure for the shipment cost item (for example, a shipment stage) using transportation planning point, service agent, shipment cost item category and shipping type as criteria.
2. The system determines the shipment costing calculation basis for the individual condition types in the pricing procedure. This controls whether costing is carried out per container, for example, or per delivery item (the shipment cost sub-items).
3. The system then searches for a valid condition record in the pricing procedure for the first condition type.
4. The priority of the criteria the system uses to search for condition records is determined by the access sequence. For example, you can set the system so that it first of all checks whether condition records of the correct condition type exist for a combination of freight class and forwarding agent. If this is not the case, then the system could check whether condition records exist just for the forwarding agent (set as the second point in the access sequence). The system continues to search until it has found a valid condition record.
5. The system can use the information stored in the condition record to determine values such as the basic freight.
6. The system now searches for the second and then the third condition record, until values have been determined for all condition types in the pricing procedure.
7. The values of the individual condition types are cumulated as specified by the pricing procedure. The final amount calculated is copied to the shipment cost sub-item.

The following figure describes the steps made by the system when calculating shipment costs.