Committing Business Transaction Items for Delivery

Use

It may be necessary for a vendor to commit to the customer that the goods are delivered by a certain date.

Example Example

For example, the customer orders some technical equipment that takes a long time to manufacture, and relies on the fact that the equipment is delivered by a certain date. Perhaps the customer plans the production based on this date, or has in turn, promised the customer to deliver by a certain date. Every day that the customer does not receive this equipment, the customer is losing money. In some cases, the vendor has to pay penalties to the customer, if the goods have not arrived by this date.

End of the example.

To work out the commitment date , you agree with the customer on a maximum time period starting from the posting date of the business transaction. This is called the agreed delivery time . The system calculates the commitment date using the agreed delivery time together with a setting in Customizing, and records the result in the commitment schedule line for the business transaction item. Of course, you can change the commitment date manually.

Integration

Availability Check

When the system carries out availability check for an item, goods can be confirmed for a certain date. This confirmation date is displayed in the confirmation schedule line for the item. In the schedule lines you can compare the confirmation date with the commitment date to see whether the goods can still be delivered on time without jeopardizing the commitment to the customer. This is especially important if a subsequent availability check is carried out – either because someone changes the business transaction manually, or because it has been changed by backorder processing. In such cases the confirmation date could change.

Status

If the confirmation date of the item is changed so that this date comes after the commitment date (for example, during backorder processing), then this item is overdue.

Prerequisites

The following settings are necessary in Customizing:

You maintain the agreed delivery time in the Agreed Delivery Time field in both the header and the item of the business transaction.

To display this field for a particular transaction type and item category, the following settings are required in Customizing under Basic Functions Date Management :
- The technical name DLVTIME is defined in the standard system as a durationunder Define Date Profile Types, Duration Types and Date Rules Duration .
- You assign the duration to a date profile under Define Date Profile . Select the relevant date profile and choose Durations .
  
  You can specify a default value for the agreed delivery time by double-clicking on DLVTIME and entering the value in the Duration field in the Default Values section.
  
  To see the screen area where the duration is to be displayed, select DLVTIME and choose Screen Areas: Duration .
- The date profile is assigned to
  - The business transaction type under Assign Date Profile to Transaction Type
  - The item category under Assign Date Profile to Item Category
- You control how the system should calculate the commitment date under Assign Date Profile to Transaction Type in the Commitment Date field.
  
  For more information on Date Management, see the SAP Library under mySAP Customer Relationship Management Enterprise Enterprise Sales Quotation and Order Processing Order Processing Basic Functions Date Management (CRM-BF-DAT) .
If you need to carry out pricing based on the commitment date, you need to make this data available for the Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC). You do this in the IMG under Customer Relationship Management Basic Functions Pricing Pricing in the Business Transaction Date and Duration Types and then Assignment of Durations . The relevant entry is DLVTIME .

You also need to customize the pricing in the IPC to take the agreed delivery time into consideration. For more information, see the SAP Library under The Pricing Process .

Features

The system calculates the commitment date and creates a commitment schedule line with the commitment date for the relevant item.

Example Example

Figure 1 shows an example of a quotation with a commitment schedule line.

The posting date of the quotation is June 1. The system adds the agreed delivery time of 2 weeks to calculate the commitment date of June 15. It creates a commitment schedule line for item 10 with the commitment date of June 15.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

The date of the commitment schedule line depends on settings in Customizing This is explained under Activities below.

End of the example.

Restrictions

The agreed delivery time and the commitment schedule lines are not transferred to SAP ERP.

If a business transaction is created in SAP ERP and transferred to SAP CRM, the agreed delivery time and the commitment schedule line are not transferred to SAP CRM.

Activities

You Specify an Agreed Delivery Time

You specify an agreed delivery time , that is, the time period that the customer grants the vendor from the date the business transaction is posted (posting date). The system calculates the commitment date by adding the agreed delivery time to the posting date of the business transaction.

You can enter the agreed delivery time for the business transaction

In the header in the General tab in the Agreed Delivery Time field

In this case the agreed delivery time is the same for all items.
In an item

In this case the agreed delivery time is valid for the specific item.

The System Calculates the Commitment Date

The system calculates the commitment date for each item based on

The posting date of the business transaction item
The setting in the Commitment date field for the business transaction type in Customizing under Customer Relationship Management Transactions Basic Settings Define Transaction Types

Example

For examples on how the system uses the settings to calculate the commitment date, see: