Inbound Processing of PRICAT Messages 

Use

This process allows you, for example, in the following cases to receive price catalog data from external systems:

·        When vendors have changed their prices for existing products

·        When vendors offer new products

It also allows you to change data you receive, for example, to map EANs/UPCs to article numbers in the system, or to enhance this received data.

Integration

Functions in ERP

·        You can use simple PRICAT inbound processing (transaction PRICAT) to create or change article data manually or automatically from catalog data.

·        You can use enhanced PRICAT inbound processing (transaction W_PRICAT_MAINTAIN) to create or change article data from catalog data, manually or automatically, in an interface capable of dealing with mass data. When it does this, the system takes into account single and generic articles and bills of material and prices.

We recommend that you only use one of these transactions to create article data.

Functions in the external system

Converting the message format (PRICAT or ANSI X12) to IDoc format

Procedure

...

       1.      The responsible individual maintains the following data:

¡        Whether a sender may import catalog data to the system.

¡        Interface settings

For more information, see the individual functions.

       2.      You import a price catalog to BAPI PRICECATALOGUE with method SAVEREPLICA, either directly or as an IDoc. Vendors normally write changes to the same catalog. When the history is active, the system creates change rows with the current date.

       3.      The system checks data for errors and adds additional information to it.

       4.      The system saves the data to the catalog tables and makes it available for further processing.

       5.      You process data manually with transaction PRICAT, or automatically with transaction W_PRICAT_MAINTAIN.

If the system can find an article number or reference article number, during automatic further processing it creates or changes the article data.

When further processing is performed manually, the responsible individual calls their data pool, which they check and process to be able to subsequently create or change article data.