Follow-Up Transactions
When you create a new transaction that relates to an existing transaction, you can create the new transaction as a follow-up transaction. When you do this, data from the original transaction is copied to the new transaction and the transactions become linked. This linking provides you with
information about the history of a particular business transaction. You can view this history in the Transaction History
assignment block in each business transaction.
Example
You receive information that a sales customer has accepted a quotation. You search for the original quotation and create a sales order as a follow-up transaction. From the sales order, you create an activity as a follow-up transaction, with a task to call the customer. In this example, the sales order is a preceding transaction of the activity, and the quotation is a preceding transaction of the sales order.
Follow-Up Transactions
You have set up copying control in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management
, under . Here you define the allowed combinations of source and target (preceding and follow-up) transactions.
You can only create a follow-up transaction if the preceding transaction does not contain errors. However, this does not apply if you are creating an activity or if you only copy individual items.
Subsequent Assignment of Transactions
You determine which transactions can be assigned to which by defining object relationship profiles in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management
, under . You assign the profiles to the appropriate transaction types in Customizing.
Creation of follow-up transactions
When you create a follow-up transaction, you can select the items that you want to copy from the original transaction. You can only copy subitems together with the higher-level item.
Subsequent assignment of follow-up transaction
You can link a transaction to another transaction after both transactions have been created. You do this in the Transaction History
assignment block.
Recommendation
We recommend that you do not subsequently assign sales quotations or sales contracts, since information about the relationship between the original transaction and follow-up transactions is missing, potentially leading to user errors when processing the follow-up transaction. If you subsequently
assign a sales quotation to a sales order, for example, the transactions are linked, however, information is not available in the system that the sales order was created as a result of the quotation being accepted. The quotation is not set to status Completed
and no data
is copied between the transactions. In the case of contracts, quantities are not updated when you make a subsequent assignment.
Transaction history
In addition to the transaction history at header level, you can also display the Transaction History
assignment block at item level in service and sales transactions.
In some cases, transaction links are not shown in the Transaction History
assignment block. The following are examples:
Related transactions that do not follow the pattern of preceding/follow-up transactions are displayed in the header details of the transaction. These include contracts and sales agreements.
Billing documents are displayed in the Billing Transactions
assignment block.
In sales transactions, delivery documents are displayed in the Shipping Transactions
assignment block.
Purchase orders, shipping notifications and goods receipts are displayed in the Shipping Transactions
assignment block.
In third-party order processing, the purchasing information record, purchasing contract, and scheduling agreement are also displayed at item level in the Shipping
assignment block.