Material listing and exclusion lets you control which materials specific customers may or may not buy. For example, if you create a material listing for a specific customer, the customer can only order products from that list. You can also create a master record for material exclusion for a particular customer. Then the customer can not order excluded materials from you.

The following figure shows the functionality of material determination.

Material listing applies to two partner functions in Sales & Distribution: the sold-to party and the payer.

In the standard version of the SAP R/3 system, when the sold-to party and payer are different, the material listing check is as follows:

• If the sold-to party has a material listing, the system only checks this listing (no other check takes place).

• If there is no listing for the sold-to party, but a listing has been created for the payer, the system automatically checks the payer’s listing.

• If no material listing data exists for either the sold-to party or payer, then the customer may order any material.

You make the settings for this in Customizing for SD Basic Functions.