Configurable Materials in SAP Purchasing

Purpose

You can use variant configuration for purchasing materials. This means that the material is procured externally, rather than produced in-house.

Restrictions

• You cannot configure a material in the purchase order itself.
You can only configure a material when you create a sales order. If you need to procure your material externally, the characteristic values assigned to the material are copied to the purchase order. You cannot change the configuration of the material in the purchase order.
• If the characteristic values in the sales order are changed, the values in the purchase order are changed accordingly.
However, these changes are not marked.

Process Flow

1. Create a sales order containing a configurable material that is procured externally.
The material need not have a BOM. However, the material must have a configuration profile with an allocation to a class. The characteristics of the class are used to describe the material.

Your externally procured material may be part of a BOM. Depending on the BOM explosion settings in the configuration profile, the material may be configured either independently or according to the characteristic values assigned to the BOM header material.

2. A purchase requisition can be generated either in the sales order itself or as a result of a material requirements planning (MRP) run.
The purchase requisition contains the characteristic values that were assigned to the material in the sales order.
3. The purchase requisition is converted to a purchase order.
The purchase order contains the characteristic values that were assigned to the material in the sales order. When you print the purchase order, these characteristic values are printed with it.

See also:

Variant Conditions in Purchasing

• Configurable Materials in SAP Purchasing
• Archiving SAP Purchase Orders
• Monitoring SAP Purchase Orders
• Blocking a SAP Purchase Order
• Cancelling a SAP Purchase Order
• Changing a SAP Purchase Order
• Changing, Cancelling, and Blocking SAP Purchase Or...
• Generating Further SAP Invoicing Plan Dates
• Settlement of Amounts Due Under SAP Invoicing Plan...
• Creating an Invoicing Plan in SAP