It may be necessary for each individual application area to include different stocks, receipts and issues in the availability check. This is possible as each application area can define its own scope for the availability check independently of each other. The scope of the availability check determines the stocks included in the availability check on the one hand and the various receipt and issue elements to be used to calculate the available quantity on the other.

The scope of the availability check is defined in Customizing.

• safety stock
• stock in transfer
• inspection stock
• blocked stock
• restricted-use stock
• subcontracting stock

• The receipt and issue elements that can be potentially included in the availability check are:

• purchase orders
• purchase requisitions
• dependent requirements
• reservations
• purchasing requirements, such as sales orders
• delivery notes
• shipping notifications
• dependent reservations
• call requirements
• planned orders
• production orders

• You can also set the following for the scope of the check:

The scope of the availability check is defined by the following parameters:

• Checking group
• Checking rule

A checking group can contain several checking rules. The combination of checking group and checking rule determines the scope (such as the stocks, receipts and issues to be included) of the availability check for each business operation.

In Customizing, each application area defines a checking rule for each business operation for which the check is to be carried out and assigns the appropriate checking groups to the individual checking rules. The scope of the availability check is determined by each combination of checking group and checking rule.

The checking group collects all the checking rules for each material for all application areas. If different checking rules are required for each business operation, several checking groups can be defined each containing different checking rules.

The checking group is assigned to the material in the material master record. Thus, the system automatically finds the checking rule valid for each operation and thus the scope of the availability check to be used for the check.

Using different combinations of checking rule and checking group means on the one hand that you can define the scope of the availability check differently for different business application areas or for different business operations. On the other hand, one indicator in the material master record (checking group) is all that is required to determine all the individual checking rules of the application areas for the material.