Distribution of Contracts (SAP Library - Distributed Contracts (MM-PUR, MM-SRV))

Distribution of Contracts

Purpose

Distributing contracts enables you to take advantage of the favorable conditions of a Centrally Agreed Contract negotiated by the central purchasing department as the Reference Purchasing Organization.

As a result, local purchasing organizations can order materials and services on better terms than would otherwise be the case.

The local purchasing organization issues release orders for materials or services against the centrally agreed contract and sends these orders direct to the vendors. At the same time, the local purchasing organization documents its own release orders and sends certain data from them back to the central purchasing organization.

All central and local release orders are documented in the central purchasing organization.

Prerequisites

Master Data

Before you can distribute contracts, you must previously have distributed the following master data:

Vendor master data
Material master data (in the case of contracts for materials)
Service master data (in the case of contracts for external services)
Purchasing info and source list records (in some cases)

For more information, refer to Distributable Master Data Objects and IDoc Types for the Distribution of Material Master Data via ALE.

Contracts

You can only distribute contracts with the item categories "standard", "material unknown", "material group", and "external service".

You can only distribute contracts without account assignment or with account assignment unknown.

Customizing

Maintain distribution model

You must maintain the distribution model. (Basis ® Application Link Enabling (ALE) ® Model and Implement Business Processes ® Maintain Distribution Model.)

Note

You can define dependencies between individual message categories in the distribution model so that contracts (message category BLAORD) are only distributed if the vendor master data (message category CREMAS) and material master data (message category MATMAS) have already been distributed to the relevant local systems.

For example, you can specify in the distribution model that the distribution of conditions (message category COND_A) is to be dependent on the distribution of the contracts (message type BLAORD).

For more information, refer to the section Distribution Model.

To maintain the distribution model, you can:

Make use of the examples provided in the standard system

Example

Two examples of distribution models are supplied in the standard system. They are based on a central system (MASTER) and a local system (LOCAL). Filter conditions are defined for the message categories used.

In the example MM-PUR1, only material and service contracts with a distribution-relevant document type are distributed if they have been created by a certain purchasing organization and a certain purchasing (buyer) group.

In the example MM-PUR2, additional filtering by plant and item category takes place.

Use the template MM46ACONTRACTS01 to make the relevant settings

Maintain partner profiles

You must maintain the partner profiles. (Basis ® Application Link Enabling (ALE) ® Model and Implement Business Processes ® Partner Profiles and Time of Processing.)

Maintain responsible systems

You must maintain the following settings:

Responsible system	You must
Central system and local system	define a separate document type for contracts that are to be distributed (Purchasing ® Contract ® Define Document Types) define different number ranges for the service specifications (External Services ® Number Ranges) The different number ranges must be maintained so that no service specifications that already exist in the central system are created in the local one. Upon receipt of the IDoc in the local system, a check is made as to whether the numbers of the service specifications are unique. If the number of a set of service specifications already exists in the local system, IDoc processing is terminated.
Central system	set the ALE distr. indicator for the distribution-relevant document type, in order for changes to be analyzed (Purchasing ® Contract ® Define Document Types) define the number range (ALE NoRng) for the distribution-relevant document type. As a result, a new number is internally assigned to local release orders (Purchasing ® Contract ® Define Document Types)
Local system	define external number assignment for the distribution-relevant document type The number range of the local system must contain the number range of the central system in order that the number of the distributed contracts lies within the number range that the local system has defined for distributed contracts.

Carry out consistency check

You can check your settings for consistency. (Basis ® Application Link Enabling (ALE) ® Configure Predefined ALE Business Processes ® Logistics ® LO <-> LO ® Purchasing: Distributed Contracts)

R/2-R/3 Linkage

You can only distribute contracts for materials from an R/2 System to an R/3 System.

When sending release order IDocs from an R/3 System to an R/2 System, you must remember that shorter field lengths are used in the R/2 System.

Field lengths	R/2	R/3
PO number	8-char.	10-char.
Company code	2-char.	4-char.
Plant	2-char.	4-char.
Release order item	3-char.	5-char.

Note

Since the PO number is 10 characters long in the R/3 System, you must add two leading zeros to an 8-character PO number.

Process Flow

The following graphic illustrates the interchange of data between a central purchasing organization and local purchasing organizations.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

The central system distributes the contract or the changes to a contract and the conditions to one or more local systems via IDoc.
On the basis of the transmitted IDoc (contract, conditions), the local system either creates a new contract or changes an existing one and updates the conditions where applicable.
The local system sends a release order IDoc containing certain data (such as the quantity released, PO number, etc.) to the central system if:

A release order is created against the contract (for materials or external services)
An unplanned service is entered against the contract (external services)

The local system updates the local release order documentation on the basis of the release order sent to the vendor. At the same time, the local system sends a release order IDoc to the central system.
The central system updates the central release order documentation and the quantity released against the central contract on the basis of the incoming release order IDoc.

Note

Using the classification system, you can distribute contracts selectively, so that contracts are only distributed to those local purchasing organizations in which they do not yet exist.

For more information, refer to Contract Distribution with Classification.

See also:

MM Purchasing documentation: Distributed Contracts

MM External Services Management documentation: Contract Release Order and Release Documentation