An outline purchase agreement is a longer-term agreement between a purchasing organization and a vendor regarding the supply of materials or the performance of services within a certain period according to predefined terms and conditions. (Outside SAP, such agreements may be referred to by a number of terms, including "blanket", "master", "framework" or "umbrella" agreements)

In the SAP System, such agreements are subdivided into:

• Contracts

• Centrally agreed contracts
• Distributed contracts

• Scheduling agreements
• Scheduling agreement referencing a centrally agreed contract

As in the case of other purchasing documents, an outline agreement consists of the following elements:

• Document header: containing information relating to the entire agreement. For example, the vendor information and header conditions are in the document header.

• Items: containing the information specific to the relevant material or service.

• Statistics on ordering activities for the item
• Quantity or price of the item
• Conditions, such as quantity discounts and surcharges

You can enter different kinds of text for outline agreements. You can create your own texts from scratch or change a text that has been suggested by the system. There are two kinds of agreement text: header text and item text. The texts are further subdivided into text types (shipping and delivery instructions, for example). The text type determines the print sequence on the document printout.