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Component documentationShipment Collaboration

 

The Shipment Collaboration component supports suppliers and customers during the processing and monitoring of shipments. For suppliers, this includes the formalities involved in getting a shipment ready for dispatching to the customer, such as weighing the shipments and posting goods issue. For customers, this includes monitoring the estimated time of arrival for shipments and posting goods receipts. Effective collaboration of customers and suppliers during shipment processing ensures that shipments are dispatched without delay and arrive on schedule.

To use this component, you must activate the business function Supply Network Collaboration 1 (SCM_SNC_GEN_1).

Features

The Shipment Collaboration component comprises customer-specific, goods-recipient-specific, and supplier-specific screens for various tasks. The supplier can use the following functions during shipment processing:

The customer and the goods recipient can display an overview and the details of existing shipments. In addition, the customer, the goods recipient, and the supplier can navigate from the Shipment Details screen directly to the Web site of a shipment tracking system of a carrier (see URL Integration with External Shipment Tracking Systems).

In addition, the following features are available:

  • Validation of shipments

    SAP Supply Network Collaboration (SAP SNC) automatically performs an SAP-SNC-internal validation, for example, when saving a shipment. The validation checks whether the data is complete and free of errors. In the standard system, the supplier can only publish valid shipments. For more information, see Validation in Shipment Collaboration.

  • Alerts

    SAP SNC can generate special shipment alerts for exceptional situations with shipments (see Shipment Alerts).

  • Number assignment for shipments

    Customers can set a number assignment on the Web user interface (UI) for shipments. For more information about the number assignment for documents in SAP SNC, see Number Assignment.

  • Notes

    Suppliers can create notes for a shipment at header level. A note can be changed until a shipment is published. For more information about notes, see Notes.

  • Document flow

    Customers, suppliers, and goods recipients can trace predecessor documents of the shipment with the document flow. For more information about the document flow in SAP SNC, see Document Flow.

  • Change history and history comparison

    For more information, see Change History and History Comparison for Documents.

  • Integration with shipment processing in SAP ERP

    Customers can transfer shipment data from SAP SNC to their SAP ERP system (see Integration of Shipment Collaboration with SAP ERP).

Attachments

Both customer and supplier can add attachments to a shipment at header or at item level.

You can add attachments to a shipment as long as the shipment is changeable. If you use the attachment functionality of SAP SNC, the system automatically generates an alert when you add a new attachment to a shipment. Provided you have set up a virus scan profile for attachments (/SCA/DM_ATTACHMENTS/UPLOAD_FILE), the system performs a virus scan on the files you upload. The recipient of the attachment (for example, if the customer uploads the attachment, the supplier is the recipient) can mark the attachment as read or unread.

Constraints

The following features are not supported by SAP SNC:

  • Packing at shipment level

  • Shipments of type Collective Shipment or Transportation Chain

  • Freight costs and invoicing from carriers

  • Tracking of events relating to shipments using SAP Event Management

  • Integration with SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM)