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Function documentationDate Management (CRM-BF-DAT)

 

Dates are important for the correct processing of all business transactions. In global business processes that cover several countries and time zones, it is particularly necessary to have a date management system that can convert time zones and the factory calendar in documents of business partners involved in a transaction.

The component Date Management enables you to process as many dates as you require in a document. You can either enter dates yourself, or, by using date rules, have the system calculate these. In Customizing, you can define date types, durations, and date rules to meet your requirements.

Integration

Date Management is used in Business Transactions in CRM Enterprise (CRM-BTX).

Furthermore, you need Date Management to define time-dependent conditions for Actions, as well as date rules and validity periods of cancellations.

To use Date Management, you have to have set the Time Zones (CA-GTF-TIM) in Customizing that applies across all applications.

Features

The component Date Management offers a flexible tool for defining dates and processing these in documents. It also provides the same interface for all CRM documents, as well as the same processing and controlling (Customizing) of dates. Date Management covers the following functions:

  • You can define dates (date types) and durations to meet your requirements. That means you can name the date types and durations according to your company terminology.

  • For every transaction at the header and/ or item level, you can define which date type you need for the transaction, that is, which item type you need.

    By doing this, you avoid saving unnecessary date types on the database. The same applies for durations (for example, contract run time).

    To assign dates and durations to an item category, you group the date types and durations you want together in a date profile and assign this to a transaction type or an item type.

  • You can calculate dates using predefined rules.

    In date rules, you can link whichever date types and durations you require, as well as other date rules, with each other so that you get calculation chains.

By using date rules in the cancellation procedure, you can also determine the cancellation dates (deadlines, cancellation date) of a cancellation.

Note Note

You can create date rules in Customizing according to your requirements. You make the required settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management by choosing Start of the navigation path Basic Functions Next navigation step Date Management Next navigation step Define Date Types, Duration Types, and Date Rules End of the navigation path .

A rule editor is available for this, in which you can define several rules using XML.

End of the note.

  • Date Management in CRM uses the functions Time Zones (CA-GTF-TIM) and Appointment Calendar (BC-SRV-GBT).

    You can use Reference Objects to control the time zones and factory calendar to which the dates in the document refer. Instead of automatically using the time zone of the user or system, you can make your settings so that the system uses a different time zone when calculating dates, for example, the time zone of a customer.

    Different dates can have different reference objects.

    Note Note

    Transport and shipping scheduling are not executed in CRM, but in the APO System (as of release APO 3.0). For more information, see SAP Library for APO under Start of the navigation path Supply Chain Management (SCM) Next navigation step Business Scenarios Next navigation step Shipping and Transport Scheduling End of the navigation path.

    End of the note.

For more information about controlling Date Management, see the Implementation Guide of Customer Relationship Management under Basic Functions -> Date Management.

Example

The company Linwood Ltd schedules the following dates in opportunities for their sales employees:

  • Presentation to Sales Prospect

  • End of Evaluation Phase

  • Submission of Quotation

  • Decision

When creating a new opportunity, the system automatically places these dates in the document and displays them on the Dates tab page.

When the date for the presentation is entered, the following dates are automatically calculated according to the date rules stored in Customizing:

  • The date End of Evaluation Phase is 6 weeks after the presentation date.

  • The system defines the date for the quotation 1 week after the end of the evaluation phase.

  • The date Decision is a week after the submission of the quotation.

Sales employees can change the times calculated by the system.