Sales Orders

Sales orders are used when customers require delivery of appropriate quantities of certain products, or provision of services, at a specific time. The sales order helps to sell your products or services. A sales area accepts the customer and is therefore responsible for fulfilling the contract.

Integration

A sales order is a sales transaction, that is, a transaction type with the business transaction category Sales.

Prerequisites

You have made settings for the individual transaction types in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Start of the navigation path Transactions Next navigation step Basic Settings Define Transaction Types End of the navigation path .

Features

Creation of a sales order as a follow-up transaction for:
- An existing quotation
- Multiple existing quotations
For example, if your customer orders products from several different quotations that were offered to him, sales employees can then create a follow-up sales order for the ordered items from the existing quotation or multiple quotations.
Releasing products from an existing sales contract.

All the relevant data is transferred from the quotation(s) or sales contract to the sales order.

In the case of multiple existing quotations, the sold-to party and organizational data of all the quotations must match. The other header data is copied from the first selected quotation.
Entry of general order data at header level. This includes, among others, transaction type, sold-to party, ship-to party, contact person, employee responsible, and requested delivery date.
Entry of required products and order quantities at item level
Visible transaction history.
The system displays all transactions that relate to the sales order. For example, both the opportunity and the quotation that led to the sales order can be displayed. Follow-up transactions such as delivery or invoicing can also be displayed.
Running of credit rating checks and credit limit checks in the sales order.
These checks limit the financial risks for a company. Transactions that are locked for credit reasons are forwarded directly to the employee responsible, for review.

The credit rating check checks the solvency of customers by using ratings in the business partner master data. This check can establish, for a business partner, whether a sales transaction can be created for this business partner in view of his or her solvency.

The credit limit check checks the customer's credit limit and any outstanding claims in SAP ERP or in another financial accounting system.
Configuration of products.
A configurable product is a product that has one or more characteristics. These characteristics can have various values. A variant is a product with a specific characteristic attribute. If a product is configurable, the possible characteristics for the product are displayed automatically. Characteristic values can be selected to determine a specific attribute for the configurable product.

Example
In the case of a personal computer (PC) for example, the characteristics monitor, memory space, or keyboard can vary.

End of the example.
Run an availability check for relevant products. This checks whether a product in a sales order can be confirmed as available, based on enough stock being available or that can be produced or purchased on time.
Proposal of additional products to the customer.

The following types of product proposal are available:
- Item proposals
  These proposals appear in the item list, and can be transferred as final items, by entering an order quantity.
  - From past orders: Products are proposed that were ordered in the customer's previous sales orders.
  - From listings: Products are proposed that are assigned to the customer as a listing.
- Product proposals
  These appear in a dedicated assignment block, Product Proposal. The proposed products can be transferred to the item list, by selecting the required product and clicking Transfer.
  - Marketing projects: Products that were already offered to the customer in campaigns or trade promotions
  - Top n products: Products that are contained in a top n product list, for example the ten most sold products
  - Cross-/up-/down-selling: More expensive products (up-selling), cheaper products (down-selling), or products that are related in some way to the product (cross-selling).
  - Accessories: A network cable for a laptop, for example.
- Selection of products from a Java-based product catalog.
  Navigation in the product catalog is like navigating in a Web shop. After selecting the required products, click Back to<Order Type> and save the sales order. The selected products are then also saved. To avoid losing selected product data, note the following:
  
  Caution
  After selecting products in the catalog, to navigate back to the order (for example, by using Back to Previous Page, or navigate to another detail area (such as Product Details), click Cancel in the dialog box that appears (Do you want to save your changes?). Then click Back to<Order Type> in the header area, and Save in the sales order. ClickingSave in this dialog box saves the sales order but the selected products are lost.
  
  End of the caution.
- Output determination to trigger actions such as the printing or faxing of sales orders.

Sales Orders with Service Parts Management

When working with service parts management, the following additional functions are available:

Assignment of a letter of credit in the sales order to limit financial risks in global retail. The customer's bank (issuing bank) uses this method to guarantee payment to a foreign vendor, for goods or services. The payment takes place once the goods or services are supplied as agreed.
Determination of a maximum number of partial deliveries for each order item, and so limit the subdivision of an order item to a specific number of deliveries.
In this way, the system creates, at most, the same number of schedule lines for each order item (with the corresponding amount and delivery date) and partial deliveries for customers, as the maximum number of partial deliveries that were determined.

If a value was already determined for the maximum number of partial deliveries in the business partner master record for the sold-to party, this number is transferred to the field by default when creating the sales order. This value can be changed manually.

Example
In a customer's business partner master record, the value 3 was determined as the maximum number of partial deliveries for the example product PROD1. During creation of a sales order, this value is transferred to it. During the availability check, appropriate schedule lines with the corresponding amount and requested date are automatically created. The number of calculated schedule lines for each product and location cannot exceed this value. 3 schedule lines are calculated for the quantity 15 pieces, with 5 pieces each of the example product PROD1 and corresponding delivery dates.

End of the example.

Explanations for Fields

Most of the standard fields are self-explanatory. For more information about special fields in service parts management, among others, see the following table:

Page Area	Field	Explanation
Billing	Letter of Credit Required	Specifies whether a letter of credit is assigned to a sales order.
Billing	Letter of Credit	Specifies the letter of credit's ID.
Billing (Item Level)	Billing Status	Specifies the status of internal billing. Internal billing is required if the sales organization that receives an order does not deliver it, but the product is instead delivered by another unit that belongs to the same organization group but a different company code. In addition to the customer invoice, the system generates an invoice for the delivering organization that bills the sales organization.
Shipping	Max. No. of Part. Deliv.	Specifies the maximum number of partial deliveries for a sales order item.