Procurement Using Vendor Confirmations in SAP MM

Purpose

Working with confirmations has the advantage that Materials Planning does not have to depend solely on the delivery dates and quantities set out in purchase orders or the delivery schedules of scheduling agreements.

Confirmations enable you to plan more exactly, since during the time-span between the order date and the desired delivery date you receive increasingly more reliable information from the vendor regarding the anticipated delivery.

Furthermore, you can monitor all confirmations and issue expediters in respect of outstanding order acknowledgments.

If you receive only order acknowledgments from your vendors, the receipt of which you wish to monitor, you just enter the acknowledgment number. In this case, no information on confirmed quantities and delivery dates is available to you in support of the procurement process.

See: Confirmations from the Purchasing Viewpoint

Integration

The information from incoming confirmations is available to the inventory management and goods receiving functions.

You can specify whether each confirmation category is relevant to materials planning in Customizing. If a confirmation is MRP-relevant, the data on quantities and delivery dates appears in the current stock/requirement list. One or more confirmation categories can be MRP-relevant, but the last confirmation that is expected must be GR-relevant.

When you post a goods receipt, the stock/requirements list is updated. That is to say, the quantities and delivery dates from MRP- and GR-relevant confirmations are deleted from the list at this time.

For more information, refer to the sections Confirmations from the Materials Planning Viewpoint and Confirmations from the Inventory Management Viewpoint.

If you wish to post a goods receipt with reference to vendor confirmations, you should set the GR assignment indicator for the desired confirmation category in Customizing for Purchasing. When you then post a relevant goods receipt, the system will provide a default line containing the confirmed quantity in respect of each confirmation (with GR-assignment) previously received.

For more information, refer to the section Confirmation-Related Goods Receipt.

Prerequisites

In order to be able to receive confirmations from your vendors, you must maintain the confirmation control facility in Customizing for Purchasing (Confirmations ® Confirmation control):

• You must define the categories of confirmation that you wish to receive from your vendors and enter manually in Customizing for Purchasing. (Confirmations ® Confirmation control ® External confirmation categories.)

You can only receive via EDI and automatically process order acknowledgments and shipping notifications. (Confirmations ® Confirmation control ® Internal confirmation categories.)

• For each confirmation category, you can specify in Customizing whether the information is to be made available to Purchasing only, or also to Materials Planning and Inventory Management. Under Confirmation sequence, select the MRP-relevant and GR-relevant indicators for the confirmation categories concerned.
• You can also specify in Customizing the sequence in which you expect to receive various confirmations.

If you enter order acknowledgment numbers solely in order to acquire a general overview of which acknowledgments you need to chase up, you need not make any settings in Customizing.

Process Flow

The following process flow gives you a broad outline of the functions available to you if you work with vendor confirmations.

1. You arrange with your vendor that the latter is to send you confirmations relating to purchase orders or to delivery schedules created under scheduling agreements.

2. You create a purchase order or a scheduling agreement delivery schedule and transmit it to your vendor.

For each item, you can specify whether order acknowledgments can be expedited (i.e. whether messages can be sent urging the vendor to send an overdue acknowledgment). This cannot be done with respect to the other categories of confirmation.

See: Creating a Purchase Order or Outline Purchase Agreement with Acknowledgment Requirement

3. You await receipt of the acknowledgment:

a. Your vendor’s acknowledgment is not received on time.

If you have set the Acknowledgment requirement indicator in the PO and your vendor has not sent an acknowledgment, you can expedite the latter (send the vendor a message urging its submission).

See: Urging Vendors to Submit Outstanding Acknowledgments

b. The vendor sends you an acknowledgment.

You enter the data from the acknowledgment in the purchase order or scheduling agreement.

If you received the acknowledgment via EDI, the system processes the data automatically.

See: Manual Maintenance of Confirmations and Receiving Confirmations via EDI

4. You await receipt of the shipping notification from your vendor.

a. You can monitor both the receipt of confirmations (here a shipping notification) and the quantities and dates set out in them.

This applies to all confirmation categories (i.e. order acknowledgments, inbound deliveries, loading confirmations, etc.).

See: Monitoring Vendor Confirmations

b. When you receive a shipping notification from your vendor, you can enter the data it contains manually in the PO or scheduling agreement, or you can create an inbound delivery with a separate inbound-delivery document.

If you have received your vendor’s shipping notification via EDI, the system processes the data automatically and creates a separate inbound-delivery document.

See: Creating an Inbound Delivery Against a Shipping Notification

5. When the goods are delivered, you can post the goods receipt with reference to the PO or the delivery schedule of the relevant scheduling agreement. If an inbound-delivery document exists for a shipping notification received from one of your vendors, you can also reference this inbound delivery when entering the goods receipt.

See also:

Example: Procurement Process Using Vendor Confirmations