Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Applies to:
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Summary
This document explains what is material determination in SAP sales and distribution.This configuration is setup when business requires swapping of one material by the other material in a sales document.The concept of material determination is also called as Product Selection i.e, Old product can be replaced by new product as per the lauch date of the product. Author: Priyadharshini Shanmugasundaram

Company: Applexus Technologies Pvt Ltd Created on: 19 May, 2011

Author Bio
Priyadharshini Shanmugasundaram is currently working as SAP TechnoFunctional Consultant in Applexus Technologies Pvt Ltd.

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Table of Contents
Material Determination ........................................................................................................................................ 3 Purpose of Substitution Strategy ........................................................................................................................ 3 Configuration for Material Determination: ........................................................................................................... 4 Step 1: Maintain Field Catelog ........................................................................................................................ 5 Step 2: Click on Display Condition tables ..................................................................................................... 5 Step 3: Maintain Access Sequences .............................................................................................................. 6 Step 4: Maintain procedure ............................................................................................................................. 7 Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 12 Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 13

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Material Determination
Substituting one product with another product is called material determination.The product is only substituted during the specific period. Eg : If material MT001 is ordered and is not available to purchase due to some reasons(could be out of stock or is not moving or due to competition),with material determination the system automatically substitutes it with MT002.

Material Determination Sales Order Material entered Substitute Material

Item Material 10 MT001 MT002

MT001

MT002

Both items MT001 and MT002 have same price and same features except the shape (which is an added feature in material MT002). Material Determination uses condition technique to swap one material for another in sales order, when certain conditions apply. Using material determination concept, you can automatically substitute the following: Customer specific product numbers with your own material numbers. International Article numbers (EANs) with your own material numbers. Seasonal products (Special gift-wrapping of a material for a festive season). Substituting discontinued materials with newer materials.

Mainly the Material determination procedure is based on the sales document type. Using condition technique, the criteria can be defined and condition records can be maintained. Standard material determination procedure for order type OR is A0001. Standard material determination condition type is A001. Swapping the product can be based on certain business conditions. These are called substitution reasons.For each substitution reason,you can define a substitution strategy.

Purpose of Substitution Strategy

System will automatically replace product as per material determination record after carrying out availability check or can give list of substitute products for users to check and select or replace material without availability check. This strategy also controls whether both substituted and substitute materials is to be displayed in the sales order or only substitute materials is to be displayed. It also controls display of substituted or substitute materials on output types like order confirmations. In delivery, no material determination is carried out for items copied from the order.

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Configuration for Material Determination:

Path : SPRO -> Sales and Distribution -> Basic Functions -> Material Determination -> Maintain Prerequisites for Material Determination

Following screen appears :

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Step 1: Maintain Field Catelog We can also access this screen using the transaction OV26. Field Catelog contains fields used by the system to determine substitution materials in the Material determination procedure. Click on Maintain Field Catelog.The following screen appears.

Click on backspace and come to the main screen. Step 2: Click on Display Condition tables

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Select 001 (Material Entered) and click enter.The fields in the condition table 001 appears.

Step 3: Maintain Access Sequences

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Access sequence is used to obtain the condition record.

Select A001 and click on accesses.

Here, you can notice that the access sequence contains the condition table 001.The first field No is the access number in which the system will read the accesses. Now select the record and click on fields.Here,you can see the fields contained in the condition record. Step 4: Maintain procedure

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Click on the procedure A0001 and click on control data.

Here, you can see that the procedure contains the condition type A001. Assign Procedures to Sales Document Type In this step we would assign the procedure A0001 to our sales document type.

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Maintain Substitution Reasons

You can also access this screen using the transaction OVRQ.

In this screen you can maintain the substitution reasons. Maintaining Materials for Substitution Goto transaction VB11 or follow the navigation bath. Path : SAP Menu -> Logistics -> Sales and Distribution -> Master Data -> Products -> Material Determination -> create

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Maintain the substitution material information and click on save. Now test the configuration by creating a sales order.

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Now if you press on enter,instead of material 1803, 1804 will appear and ordered due to material determination configuration.

Hope the concept of Material Determination in SAP Sales and Distribution is clearly understood.

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Related Content
SAP Help Portal SAP Documentation For more information, visit the Enterprise Resource Planning Homepage.

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Material Determination in Sales and Distribution

Disclaimer and Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade. SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document, and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk. SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this document.

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