Document Flow
Use
The document flow shows how far the sales document has been processed and creates a business transaction out of consecutive documents in the system.
For example, a document flow could contain a quotation, a sales order, delivery and an invoice. If you displayed the document flow from the sales order, the quotation would be a preceding document and the delivery and invoice would be subsequent documents.
Prerequisites
The system always updates the preceding documents. However, if you also want it to update the subsequent documents in the document flow, you must make the relevant settings in Customizing for copying control. Copying control and documents flow are defined for documents in:
You can find more information in the Implementation Guide (IMG) under Copying control by going to Sales and Distribution ®
Sales ® Maintain copying control for sales documents.Features
The document flow is updated by the system on two levels:
The document flow lists all the preceding and subsequent documents as well as the document date and the complete processing status of each document.
Document flow
Document |
Date |
Complete processing status |
. Sales order 5362 |
June 10 |
Completed |
Delivery 80003721 |
June 10 |
Completed |
. Picking order 19980610 |
June 10 |
Completed |
. Goods delivery 49007080 |
June 10 |
Completed |
. Invoice 90005596 |
June 10 |
Completed |
.. Accounting document 100007729 |
June 10 |
Not cleared |
The points show at what level the document appears in the reference chain. The document flow is displayed for the document without any points, in this case, the delivery.
The documents that directly precede or follow the document in the document flow are represented with one point. Indirect preceding and subsequent documents have two or more points. In the above example, the financial accounting document directly follows the invoice and is an indirect subsequent document of the delivery.