Signaling of Differing Supplier Confirmations 

Use

You can use this function to display differing supplier confirmations in the sales order. Quantities or dates confirmed by suppliers do not match the quantities and dates requested in the sales order.

Prerequisites

In order to enter differing supplier confirmations in the purchase order, you have to have made the settings necessary for confirmation control in SAP R/3. You can find further information in the Implementation Guide (IMG) for Materials Management under Purchasing  ® Confirmations  ® Set Up Confirmation Control.

Functional Scope

Deviations can be caused by changes to quantity, postponement of the desired delivery date, or cancellation of order items. The system compares the quantities and dates confirmed by the supplier with the quantities and dates requested by the customer and, if necessary, produces a warning message and stores corresponding confirmed quantities and dates in the sales order. For this, the system checks the following:

·        Does the confirmed quantity differ from the purchase order quantity?

·        Does the next closest confirmed delivery date fall before the desired delivery date?

Activities

If the system produces a warning message after the check, you can contact the customer, the supplier, or both. You can clear the warning message by:

·        Adjusting purchase order quantities or desired delivery dates to match the supplier confirmation

·        Receiving a revised confirmation from the supplier

Example

A customer orders 20 tires for August 15th. A purchase order is sent to the supplier. The customer later reduces the quantity to 10 tires, and specifies that she does not want them to be delivered until August 31st. The changes are sent to the supplier who, however, rejects them and sends a confirmation of 20 tires. Due to limited storage, the supplier confirms 10 tires for August 15th, and 10 tires for August 31st. If the customer accepts the supplier confirmation, the changed customer data is reset in the sales order, and the supplier confirmation is adjusted. If the customer does not accept the supplier confirmation, it is possible for the supplier to send a new confirmation which is adjusted to incorporate the customer changes.