SAP MM: Creating a Contract Release Order using SAP MM Outline Purchase Agreements With Vendors

If a contract with one of your principal vendors exists for a material, you can create purchase orders referencing this contract. Purchase orders created in this way are called contract release orders.

(Outside the SAP System, in particular, these may also be referred to as "blanket releases", "contract releases", "call-off orders" or "call-offs".) 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 - as here - or 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 a PO for items requested by a user department).

The release (order) documentation lists the ordering activities for a given contract (see Displaying the Release Documentation for a Contract

Prerequisites

Before creating a contract release order, you need the following information:

Number of the contract

Quantity to be released (ordered)

Delivery date

The price, vendor data, terms of payment, delivery costs, and any instructions to the vendor are adopted from the contract automatically.

When you create a release order, you can add items that are not specified in the contract.

Procedure

Choose Purchase order

Create

Vendor known

The initial screen appears.

If appropriate, make specifications under the group heading Default data. This data is then adopted in each item.

If you create a release order against a contract which already contains the data "plant" and "storage location", for example, and you enter default data on the initial screen, the system will apply the data from the contract and ignore your data.

If you wish to create a release order against a centrally agreed contract, for example, and enter a plant and a storage location on the initial screen, this default data will be adopted in the items of the purchase order because it does not exist in the central contract.

Choose Purchase order

Create

with reference

To contract

A dialog box appears.

Enter the number of the contract and the number of the relevant item (if known). Then press

ENTER

The contract item overview appears.

Select the items to be adopted.

Enter the following data:

– Order quantity and delivery date or

– Requisition number that the order references

Check the account assignment and item categories, if specified.

The data required here is listed in the section Item Category/Account Assignment Category in Contracts.

Choose one of the following menu paths:

– If you wish to change the selected items before adopting them, choose Edit ® Selections ® Edit ® Adopt + details. Change the individual items on the item detail screen.

– If you wish to adopt the selected items without first changing them, choose Edit ® Selections ® Edit ® Adopt.

The item overview appears, with the items that have been adopted.

If you entered a requisition number in step 6, an additional item overview screen appears. Check the order quantity and delivery and release dates that were adopted from the requisition.

Save the release order.

Result

The contract release order is created in the R/3 System. In order that the information in the release order can be transmitted to the vendor, the system generates a message for the order. How to transmit the message to the vendor is described under Outputting Messages.

Item/Account Assignment Categories

The entries you must make for a contract release order depend on the item category and the account assignment category:

If the account assignment category is:	Enter:
M (material unknown)	the material (with or without material master record). Set the item category to " ".
W (material group)	Price, quantity and a material (with or without material master record) belonging to the material group specified in the contract. Set the item category to " ".
U (account assignment unknown)	a different account assignment category than U and the account assignment