Show TOC

 Generating and Outputting Confirmations (Vendor)

Use

You use confirmations to let your customer know whether or not you can fulfill current requested quantities.

If you can completely fulfill your customer’s requested quantities, then you can send a matching confirmation. Otherwise, you can confirm your customer’s requested quantities with non-compliance or only partially confirm them. In the confirmation profile you can define in which cases requirements are regarded as confirmed fully.

If the complete quantity is feasible, then the system can generate a matching confirmation for the requested quantity. The system can do this automatically when the feasibility check takes place for example.

You can also confirm requested quantities manually in the product view or product planning table.

If you do not send confirmations to your customers, then the confirmed quantities are only taken into account internally, that is in scheduling and material requirements planning.

If you (or the system) confirm the customer’s requested quantities with compliance then you can define in Customizing whether or not the confirmation sent to the customer should also contain schedule lines.

If the confirmed quantities match the requested quantities (full confirmation), then the vendor can send confirmations that do not contain schedule lines, in line with the confirmation profile.

In the customer’s SAP APO System the schedule lines of the operative delivery schedule are used instead of the confirmed quantities. The schedule lines are, for example, saved as confirmed quantities in the liveCache, displayed as SA-ConfRel , in the product view and if necessary transferred to the SAP R/3 System

Alerts are displayed in the Alert Monitor for releases that cannot be automatically confirmed . These alerts give the planner an overview of the current situation and the extent of manual reprocessing.

For more information, see Alert Monitor for Sales Scheduling Agreement

Prerequisites

See also Prerequisites for the Sales Scheduling Agreement

Features

How can confirmations be generated?

Confirmations can be generated automatically, if the system checks the feasibility of requested quantities and can confirm them with compliance:

During inbound processing with feasibility check

During the feasibility check in the background (report)

If the system can confirm requested quantities with compliance within the feasibility check, then the current status of the sales scheduling agreement item changes to Confirmation Matches .

This means that an automatic change of status from current to transmitted status takes place as part of the feasibility check if requested quantities are feasible.

If confirmations (actions) are processed immediately then the confirmation is transmitted straight away and the transmitted status is Confirmation Matches.

If requested quantities are not completely feasible then the current status of the sales scheduling agreement item changes to Feasibility not ok .

In backorder processing (in the background)

Partial confirmations can also be generated as part of backorder processing in the background. In comparison, only full confirmations can be generated within the feasibility check.

See also Backorder Processing

The generation of confirmations means that an action is generated for the confirmation, a new confirmation number is assigned and the confirmation can be displayed in the corresponding function.

You can manually generated confirmations by:

Manually confirming (and saving) your customer’s requested quantities (that is due delivery schedules) in the product view or product planning table ( sales scheduling agreement ). If necessary, you can confirm requested quantities with non-compliance.

See Processing Sales Scheduling Agreements in the Product Planning Table or Product View

Confirming requested quantities in interactive backorder processing

If necessary you can also confirm requested quantities with non-compliance.

See also Backorder Processing

The sales scheduling agreement item either has the status Confirmation matches or Confirmation deviates , depending on whether or not you can fully or only partially confirm your customer’s requested quantities.

When Are Confirmations Full or Partial?

In the confirmation profile, which you assign to sales scheduling agreement items, you can define the conditions under which requirements are fully (compliant) or partially (deviating) confirmed. Using the determination type you can define whether requested quantities have to be confirmed to the second, to the hour or to the day, in order for the system to issue a full confirmation.

The determination type that you have set in the confirmation profile determines whether you have fully or partially confirmed the requested quantities. The result of the check ( Partial or Full Confirmation ) is displayed as the Current Status of the sales scheduling agreement item.

In the confirmation profile you have set a to-the-day check so that the time of the requested or confirmed quantity is not taken into account.

Your customer wants 100 pc on September 24 th at 14.00.

You can only meet the requirement of 100 pc at 21.00.

Because you have defined a to-the-day check, the requirements are fully confirmed.

If you only send confirmations to your customers in exceptional cases (in other words, when the requested quantities are only partially confirmed) then in this case, no confirmation would be sent.

When are confirmations transmitted to the customer?

You can output manually or automatically generated confirmations and send them to the customer. You can output confirmations (actions) immediately or using the Output of Confirmations function so that a confirmation is sent to your customer as a result.

Technically speaking, actions are generated for confirmations. Using these actions you control the generation and output of confirmations so that you can check the confirmations again before their output.

An action contains the following information:

When a confirmation will be output, that is, printed out or transmitted ( immediate processing or processing via selection report )

Which medium is to be used (for example, printer, fax, XML).

The action definition in the SAP APO System corresponds to the message type in the SAP R/3 System.

The IDoc DELFOR01 is used for the transmission of the confirmation data by EDI.

Activities

Generate confirmations manually in the product view or product planning table

Choose Supply Chain Collaboration → Sales Scheduling Agreement Processing → Product Planning Table (Sales Scheduling Agreement).

On the initial screen, enter the planning version000and the necessary data.

For example, you can select the sales scheduling agreement item over the current status.

The product planning table appears.

In the Product view: periodic you can change the confirmed quantities or adopt the requested quantities as confirmed quantities.

To copy the requested quantities into the confirmation, select the lines of the requested quantities ( SD SA Rel./<...>/Request) and choose .

To save your entries, choose .

Choose Process SD Scheduling Agreement and then Display Delivery Schedules and Confirmations to see the generated confirmation .

A new window appears displaying releases and confirmations for the sales scheduling agreement item.

In this window you can, for example, compare the current confirmation with the last one.

Select two confirmations and choose to compare them.

Redistribute Quantities in Backorder Processing

In interactive backorder processing, you can redistribute confirmed quantities across selected demands.

To access backorder processing:

Choose the ATP tab page in the Product View .

In the Product Planning Table , choose the Backorder Processing chart.

Choose Global ATP → Backorder Processing → Interactive Backorder Processing → Individual access tab page.

For more information on backorder processing, see the SAP Library for the Global Available-to-Promise Check (Global ATP) under Backorder Processing

Output Confirmations (Report)

You can select and process actions for confirmations using the report /SAPAPO/PPFSCO. This means that you can regularly transmit confirmations to the relevant target locations, for example, customers.

Choose Supply Chain Collaboration → Sales Scheduling Agreement Processing → Output of Confirmations , to output confirmations.

On the initial screen, enter your criteria (for example, product, location or responsible planner) and choose the time of processing1(Processing via selection report) or3( immediate processing ).

You see a list of actions that you can process, in other words, output.

The application key displayed in this list is made up of sales scheduling agreement/item/schedule type and confirmation number.

The schedule type can be one of the following: 1 - operative delivery schedule, 2 – forecast/planning delivery schedule, 3 – due delivery schedule, 4 – confirmation.

The requested quantities are transferred to the SAP R/3 System when the confirmation is generated.

See also Data Exchange Between SAP APO and SAP R/3