Order Confirmations via the Internet 

Purpose

In the apparel and footwear industry, you often work with vendors of varying size from all over the world. The ability to process order confirmations via the Internet is therefore of great benefit in this business scenario. You will receive confirmations from your vendor without delay, even if they do not work with an SAP system.

Prerequisites

Before your vendor can enter order confirmations via the Internet, the following prerequisites must be fulfilled:

●      Definition of external confirmation categories and confirmation keys in Customizing
You can have your vendor confirm various steps of a complex process via the Internet. You specify in the confirmation control in Customizing how detailed the confirmation should be. To do this choose Materials Management ® Purchasing  ®Confirmations  ® Set Up Confirmation Control.

○       Define external confirmation categories such as order acknowledgement, tailor-making, ironing, sewing, and so on.

○       Define a confirmation control key, which you store in the purchasing data of the purchasing info record or directly enter in the item detail of the corresponding purchasing document.

○       For each confirmation control key specify which process steps should be confirmed in which sequence.

●      Assigning your vendor a password
You give your vendor authorization to enter confirmations for purchase orders via the Internet by assigning them a password, which you can create, change, and delete via transaction SU05.

Process Flow

You evaluate the order confirmations your vendor enters via the Internet:

●      How your vendor enters the confirmations
After your vendor has logged on with their customer number and password, they confirm the purchase orders you have placed by doing the following:

○       Your vendor first selects the purchase order and then the purchase order item for which they want to enter a confirmation.

○       Your vendor enters which step of the process they would like to confirm. They will then be able to select from the external confirmation categories that you defined, which are displayed in a list field.

○       The stockkeeping units, which belong to the selected purchase order items as schedule lines, are then listed in a table. In addition to the delivery date and the purchase order quantity at SKU level, the already confirmed quantities, confirmed delivery date, open quantities, and the confirmation date are also displayed in this table.

■       The vendor enters the quantity they want to confirm in the table column Open quantity.

■       The vendor enters the date on which the confirmed process step will be completed in the table column Confirmation date.

■       By saving the confirmation, the quantity entered will be transferred to the table field Confirmed quantity and the confirmation date entered will be transferred to the table column Confirmed delivery date.

If you enter confirmations for individual partial quantities at different times, the confirmation date of the partial quantity that was last confirmed will be entered as the confirmed delivery date for the total quantity of an SKU.
For example, you confirm the process step Sewing for a T-shirt BLUE/XL in two steps. On December 4, 2000, you confirm that the process step Sewing is completed for 50 T-shirts. On December 14, you confirm the process step Sewing for the remaining 50 T-shirts. In the overview, the confirmed delivery date will be set to December 14 for the total quantity of 100 T-shirts.

●      Overview in the purchase order of the received confirmations
You can immediately see the confirmations that your vendor entered and saved via the Internet in your purchase orders (Item ®Confirmations ® Overview). If the external confirmation category is flagged as MRP-relevant in Customizing, incoming confirmations of this process step will also be considered in the MRP.

By entering a shipping notification via the internet, no delivery document will be created in the AFS system. It is recommended, not to create shipping notifications via internet, as it can create inconsistencies with respect to status of goods movement.

You can find information on entering a confirmation in the AFS system in the documentation Order Confirmations.