Processing Quotations

In SAP CRM, you can create and process quotations, and create a follow-up sales order for a quotation or multiple quotations.

Prerequisites

You have defined Quotation as a transaction type and made the required settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) under Transactions Basic Settings Define Transaction Types .

You have defined specific item categories for quotations in Customizing for CRM under Transactions Basic Settings Define Item Categories.
Choose the option Initially a quotation for the Relevance for Quotation field for the required item categories.

You have maintained item category determination for your transaction type in Customizing for CRM under Transactions Basic Settings Define Item Category Determination .

Example Example

In the standard system, the transaction type Quotation (AG) is set so that the item category Quotation Item (AGN) is determined as the default value, meaning that items are automatically entered as quotation items. However, the functionality for quotations is at item level.

End of the example.

Features

Sales Probability

You can assign a sales probability to a quotation item. It indicates the probability that an order will be placed, and is used when calculating the expected total net value in dynamically cumulated document data. Sources for sales probability are:

General sales probability for a quotation item, defined in Customizing for the item category
Success rate of a product
Manual entries in the quotation

Example
If the sales probability is 70%, this means that 70% of the order quantity is also reserved.

End of the example.

Validity

The system can automatically determine validity data from the date profile created for the quotation.

You can also manually enter validity data in the transaction item. At item level, you can enter dates that differ from the header. If you do not do this, the dates in the transaction header are automatically valid for the quotation item as well.

See Dates in Business Transactions.

Alternative Items

You may not want to commit yourself to a specific product when you create the quotation, but would rather offer the customer a list of several products. Items for a quotation can be combined into groups, from which the customer can decide on an alternative. For all alternative items, enter the item number of one of the offered products in the item overview, under Alternative Items. The item you enter here is the leading item when the system calculates the expected product value and net value. When you copy or convert a quotation to a sales order, the transaction remains incorrect if more than one of the items for selection were copied.

Actions

Quotations can be linked to actions. For instance, you can define that:

A quotation is automatically completed once the validity is exceeded
The follow-up action Create Business Activity is triggered shortly before the validity expires
A query is created shortly after the validity start date, to gather initial feedback from the customer
The Workflow for Automatically Releasing Quotations should be started from a start condition (for example, net value larger than EUR 100 and quotation has status For release)
Quotations of a lower value are released immediately

For more information, see Actions in CRM Enterprise.

Availability Check in Quotations

Quotation items are checked with a separate ATP profile for availability, which you can define in Customizing for the item category. You have the following options:

If a check should not be carried out in the quotation phase, leave the ATP profile: quot. field blank.
If the quotation should be checked in the same way as the sales order, enter the same ATP profile for the quotation as the general ATP profile of the sales order.
If the quotation should be checked using a simulation, that is, confirmed date and quantity are determined, but a reservation is not created; enter an ATP profile that is set up in SAP APO for an internal requirements update, but not an external one.

Note

The system does not check and confirm using the complete quotation quantity, but with a percentage of this quantity that is calculated from the sales probability.

End of the note.

For more information, see Availability Information in Quotations (Using SAP APO).

Accepting a Quotation

You can accept a quotation in the following ways:

By creating a sales order as follow-up for a quotation

By creating a sales order as follow-up for multiple quotations

In this case, you can then copy items from multiple quotations to one single sales order.

By creating multiple sales orders with reference to one quotation.

Note Note

At item category level, you can define whether users are allowed to create multiple orders with reference to a quotation or only one, as well as the quantity that is transferred to the sales order. You make these settings in Customizing for CRM under Start of the navigation path Transactions Next navigation step Basic Settings Define Item Categories End of the navigation path on the Customizing Item screen, in the fields Multiple References and Fixed Qty.

End of the note.

Completing Quotations

The quotation is completed, as follows:

Automatically after the validity has expired
When all items are transferred to one or multiple orders
If it is canceled by the customer

Approving Quotations

To avoid sending a quotation with unclear conditions to the customer, you can use a workflow procedure for releasing (approving) quotations. Information about this is available at Workflow for Approving Quotations and Workflow for Automatically Releasing Quotations.

Printing Quotations

When you print a sales transaction, the quotation items are displayed in a separate block.

Note Note

The quotation becomes binding when you print and, if applicable, automatically deliver it. It is therefore advisable to work with the user status Do not print, so that you can avoid printing the transaction at first.

For more information about status management, see Status Management in Business Transactions and Customizing for CRM under Start of the navigation path Transactions Next navigation step Basic Settings Status Management Define Status Profile for User Status End of the navigation path .

End of the note.