Definition

A form of outline purchase agreement under which materials are procured on predetermined dates within a certain time period.

Structure

A scheduling agreement consists of a number of items, for each of which a procurement type is defined. The following procurement types exist:

Delivery of the total quantity of material specified in a scheduling agreement item is spread over a certain period in a delivery schedule, consisting of lines indicating the individual quantities with their corresponding planned delivery dates.

For scheduling agreement items involving subcontracting, you can specify the materials or components to be provided to the subcontractor with respect to each scheduled delivery of the ordered item.

Conditions can apply to the entire scheduling agreement. Conditions at item level apply specifically to the material to be supplied in each case.

Scheduling agreement releases (comprising a header and the actual delivery schedule) are issued to the vendor, instructing the latter to effect deliveries of the relevant material on the dates shown.

Costs can be apportioned among various Controlling objects via the account assignment.

Vendors can issue confirmations to the relevant purchasing organization indicating their compliance or non-compliance with scheduled delivery dates.

If you are using scheduling agreements, you can work with or without release documentation. This is controlled via the document type. Working with such documentation affords the advantage that you can display the valid scheduling agreement releases transmitted to a vendor over a certain period whenever necessary. Note on the term "release": In MM Purchasing, this term is used A) as a generic term covering various kinds of order document issued against outline agreements (these may be release orders issued against contracts or - as here - scheduling agreement releases, i.e. types of rolling delivery schedule issued against scheduling agreements), and B) in connection with an internal approval or expenditure authorization process for purchasing documents. In both cases, "releasing" can be regarded as equivalent to "giving the green light" to go ahead with a certain action (e.g. to the vendor to deliver a certain quantity of materials, or to Purchasing to create or issue a PO for items requested by a user department).

The schedule lines in the system have internal character. This means that you can change them in any way you wish. The schedule lines stored in the system are not transmitted to the vendor until you explicitly create a scheduling agreement release (which may take one of two forms: a forecast delivery schedule or a JIT delivery schedule).

The release documentation allows you to display the releases transmitted to a vendor over a certain period in order to establish exactly when you transmitted which information to the vendor.

The schedule lines immediately have official character, i.e. they are immediately transmitted to the vendor the moment you save them (transmission time-spot 4 for messages). There is no release documentation in this case.