Expanded margin limits and hold options

Currently, minimum and maximum margin limits are assigned only at the company level for product price types in SA Table Code Value Setup-Product Price Types. This enhancement uses a hierarchy of new margin tolerances for an order line's product price type records to apply updated margin hold logic at invoice processing or shipping. This expansion of the line level margin checks and hold functionality associated with product price types provides more flexibility when applying margin holds to sales orders. With this change, you can now enforce minimum and maximum margin percentages based on new factors such as customer, warehouse, pricing zone, and price region.

New margin limit options

Use the new PD Margin Tolerance Setup to specify line-level margin tolerances based on customer, warehouse, pricing zone, and price region, in addition to the company-level limits set up in SA Table Code Value Setup by product price type. You can specify minimum and maximum percentage values for each type of margin limit.

When this enhancement is enabled, the specified tolerance limits are verified at order entry, shipping, and invoice processing. This hierarchy is used when checking the limits:

  1. Customer
  2. Warehouse
  3. Pricing Zone
  4. Price Region
  5. Company

When the first active minimum and maximum limit is found, the search is ended and all other levels in the hierarchy are ignored.

The warehouse, pricing zone, and price region margin types can be affected by the operator's home warehouse settings in SA Operator Setup and Product Warehouse Description Setup.

Order entry margin checks

When you enable extended margin limits, a warning message is displayed to the user for each Sales Order Entry line item where the margin is outside the allowable tolerance, according to the margin checks hierarchy. The Sales Exceptions Report now includes the hierarchy of margin limits for customer, warehouse, pricing zone, price region, and SA Table Code Value Setup-Product Price Type company level when they are set up. To display lines with the margin exception on the report, the Item Profit Margin Beyond Defined Limits report option must be set to Yes.

Invoicing margin holds

When you enable invoicing margin limit holds, orders are placed on margin hold during invoice processing when a line is outside the margin tolerance limits defined in PD Margin Tolerance Setup and SA Table Code Value Setup. If an order line or lines cause an order exception in the Sales Entry Invoice Processing Report based on the margin checks hierarchy, then the order is placed on hold, and the exception is displayed in the Sales Invoicing Exception Inquiry.

You can release the invoicing margin hold in Sales Credit Release Inquiry or on the Operational Hold Code Approval page in Sales Shipping Feedback Entry.

Feature activation

Select the Use Extended Margin Limits option in SA Administrator Options-Documents-Sales Orders-Approval Process to enable the extended margin limits specified in PD Margin Tolerance Setup.

Select the Use Invoicing Margin Limit Holds option in SA Administrator Options-Documents-Sales Orders-Approval Process to put orders on hold in invoice processing when they are outside the margin limits defined in PD Margin Tolerance Setup. This option cannot be selected if the Use Extended Margin Limits option is deselected. Additionally, you must implement operational hold codes to allow multiple active holds per order. The line level margin limit checks consider all operational hold codes when determining an order's approval.

See the information in the Distribution SX.e online help for implementing operational hold codes.

Specify a value in the new Invoicing Margin Hold field in SA Administrator Options-Documents-Sales Orders-Approval Process. This value is added to the default set of operational hold codes in SA Table Code Value Setup.

Operator access to the new PD Margin Tolerance Setup screen is determined by standard functional security in SA Operator Setup.

Optionally, create pricing zones that are specific to your business requirements in the new Pricing Zone table in SA Table Code Value Setup. This table provides lookup values for the Pricing Zone fields in PD Margin Tolerance Setup and Product Warehouse Description Setup.