Confirmations
Use
Within collaborative management of delivery schedules, the vendor can confirm scheduling agreement (SA) releases in his or her SAP APO system.
The customer can receive and process these confirmations in his or her SAP APO system.
Both business partners must agree on when (that is, in which situations) confirmations should be sent between the vendor and the customer.
The vendor can completely or partially confirm the quantities requested by the customer and if necessary send a confirmation to the customer.
Note
You can use the planning procedurein the location-dependent product master to define for customer requirements whether the requirement quantity or the confirmed quantity is pegging-relevant.
If you carry out planning on the basis of the requested quantity, then customer requirements are planning-relevant when you receive the SA release.
If you carry out planning on the basis of the confirmed quantity, then customer requirements only become planning-relevant when they have been confirmed, regardless of whether this confirmation has been sent to the customer or not.
See Determine the Pegging-Relevant Quantity for Customer Requirements
The customer receives the vendor’s confirmation of the SA release. This confirmation gives the customer up-to-date data when planning takes place and not only when the vendor posts the outbound delivery or goods issue.
Confirmations are generated at the time of planning in the SAP APO system, whereas shipping notificationsare sent when outbound delivery or goods issue takes place in the SAP R/3 system.
The confirmation is a new document (a new object) and is therefore an enhancement of the scheduling agreement process in the case of both sales and procurement scheduling agreements.
These confirmations also contain multiple schedule lines for a longer time period. In contrast, the shipping notification only contains the delivery quantities for a certain date.
Prerequisites
Features
Both business partners must agree on when (that is, in which situations) confirmations should be sent between the vendor and the customer.
The customer can define the required process in his or her SAP APO system in the external procurement relationship of the procurement scheduling agreement ( APO Scheduling Agreement).
The vendor can define the required process in his or her SAP APO system in the confirmation profile of the sales scheduling agreement.
Customer - SAP APO |
Vendor – SAP APO |
|---|---|
|
|
Process Without Confirmations |
Confirmation is never sent |
Process with Expected Confirmations |
Confirmation is always sent |
Process with Confirmations only in Exceptional Cases |
Confirmation is only sent when there is deviation from the due delivery schedule |
Generation of Confirmation (Vendor)
The vendor can choose whether he or she never wants to send confirmations, always wants to send confirmations or only wants to send confirmations when there is a deviation from the due delivery schedule. In the confirmation profile of the sales scheduling agreement the vendor can choose the process he or she wants to use.
The confirmation is generated directly after the admissibility and feasibility check. If the result of the feasibility check for a product in a location is positive then the relevant scheduling agreement releases are fully confirmed (confirmed with compliance).
In the confirmation profile you can define in which cases requirements are regarded as confirmed fully. In the confirmation profile you can define whether requested and confirmed quantity are checked to-the-second, to-the-minute, to-the-hour or to-the-day to determine whether requested quantities are confirmed fully or partially. ( Confirmation Status).
If requested, the confirmation can be sent to the customer by EDI.
Note
When you create or change confirmations in the product view/product planning table the
Current Status
shows whether the requested quantities (that it, the due delivery schedule) were confirmed fully or partially.
If new scheduling agreement releases (operative, forecast/planning delivery schedule) have been received in the meantime, the
Current Status
does
not
change to
Full Confirmation
or
Partial Confirmation
when the confirmation is saved.
In this case the
Current Status
displays the result of the admissibility check that was carried out for the last due delivery schedule. The
Current Status
is then either
Admissibility OK or Admissibility Not OK.
When the confirmation is generated in the vendor’s SAP APO system the current shipping-relevant data is transferred to the SAP R/3 system over the APO Core Interface(CIF). As a result, an SA release is generated in the SAP R/3 system, which can be used as the basis for creating the outbound delivery.
In the control profile, you use the
Planning Indicator Schedule Types
and
Release Transmission
indicators to define whether and until what time the schedule lines of the confirmation and/or the due delivery schedule should be used to generate the JIT delivery schedule and forecast delivery schedule in the linked OLTP system.
This setting ensures that all the necessary data for sending and business processing of scheduling agreements in the SAP R/3 system is available.
Confirmation Receipt (Customer)
The customer can choose whether to work without confirmations, to always work with confirmations or to only work with confirmations in exceptional circumstances. The customer can define the process he or she wants to use in the
Process
field of the external procurement relationship.
If you have set the
Process Without Releases with Confirmation in SNP
in the external procurement relationship no releases are sent. Instead the vendor confirms the scheduled quantities in
Collaborative Procurement Planning
for SNP over the Internet. (See
Procurement Scheduling Agreements in Heuristic-Based SNP Planning
)
Note
If you want to switch from
Process with Confirmations
or
Confirmations in Exceptional Cases
to a process without confirmations during operation then all confirmations in the
liveCacheare deleted. The existing confirmations that have already been saved for the scheduling agreement are not affected by this.
Depending on which process the customer uses, the schedule lines are transferred to the linked SAP R/3 system when the confirmation is received in the customer’s SAP APO system. In the SAP R/3 system they serve as the basis for the default quantity at the time of goods receipt.
Note
If the linked OLTP system is a SAP R/3 system then the confirmation is a prerequisite for the inbound delivery or the goods receipt.
The customer can use these confirmations in his or her SAP R/3 system, for example as the basis for the ATP check.
Depending on the process used, it is also advisable to define whether releases or confirmations should be ATP-relevant. Releases are generally ATP-relevant.
You define this in Customizing for
A
dvanced Planning and Optimization
underGlobal
Available-to-Promise (Global ATP Check)
Product Availability Check
Maintain Check Control
).
For more information see the documentation on the Global Availability Check (Global ATP) .
If
Process Without Confirmations
or
Process with Confirmations only in Exceptional Cases
is selected for the process in the external procurement relationship, then the operative delivery schedule sent appears as a series of scheduling agreement schedule lines in the linked SAP R/3 system.
If you use the
Process Without Confirmations
, you can define that the system issues an alert when an unexpected confirmation is received.
For more information on confirmations for the sales process see Outputting Confirmations (Vendor) , Displaying Confirmations and Deleting Confirmations .
For more information about confirmations on the procurement side, see Receiving Confirmations (Customer) , Entering Confirmations Displaying Confirmations and Alert Monitor for the Procurement Scheduling Agreement .