Purchase contracts

Purchase contracts are used to register agreements with a buy-from business partner for the delivery of specific goods.

These agreements can be registered at the following levels:

  • Purchase contract lines
    In contract lines, the agreements with a business partner about the delivery of a particular item or group of items for a specified period of time are registered. These agreements are focused on total quantities, prices, and discounts. You can specify an effective period and indicate whether the minimum quantity to purchase is binding.
  • Terms and conditions agreements
    In terms and conditions agreements, detailed terms and conditions regarding orders, planning, logistics, invoicing, and demand pegging regarding the sale, purchase, or transfer of goods, are registered. A purchase terms and conditions agreement must be linked to a normal purchase contract before you can use it.

Contract types

You can specify these contract types:

For each purchase business partner, you can close multiple special contracts in one period. In a specific period, you cannot specify more than one normal contract per item or price group for a buy-from business partner.

Purchase contracts are used as the basis of purchase orders or purchase schedules. The data specified in the purchase contract serves as a parent of the data that you specify in the linked purchase order or purchase schedule.

When creating planned purchase orders or purchase schedules from Enterprise Planning, during the supplier selection process, purchase business partners are searched for who can supply the required item. Based on the priority search levels specified on the Buy-from BP Search Schedules and Buy-from BP Search Orders tabs of the Purchase Contract Parameters (tdpur0100m300) session, purchase contracts can be used to search for these purchase business partners. If valid business partners are found, they are sent to and selected by Enterprise Planning.

Contracts in a multisite structure
Corporate purchase contracts

In a multicompany structure, you can also specify a corporate purchase contract. Such a contract is used to centrally specify price agreements (by purchase contract line), and to decentrally specify logistic agreements (by purchase contract line detail).

Corporate purchase contracts allow you to make keen price agreements on a corporate level and to use these prices on site level. You can use corporate purchase contracts only for push schedules.

Note

Corporate purchase contracts are not specified on contract header level, but on line level. Therefore, a purchase contract can include both lines of the Total type and lines of the Contract Line type. Total lines have linked contract line details, which can apply only to corporate purchase contracts. Contract lines apply to regular purchase contracts.

Central contracts

In a multicompany structure, you can define a central contract that can be used by various purchase offices from different logistic companies. The following are applicable to these contracts:

  • The central purchase office maintains the purchase contract and purchase pricing.
  • Price and logistic agreements are specified on a central level, by purchase contract line.
  • Each separate logistic company (site) purchases goods directly from suppliers, handles receipts, and pays invoices.
  • The local purchase orders are based on the conditions, prices, and discounts laid down in the central contract.
  • The local companies' purchased quantities are aggregated to the central contract.
  • In the company that maintains the central contract, you cannot use delivery schedules to update planned inventory transactions, because the inventory is present in other companies. You can only use the delivery schedules to display information.
  • LN records the supplier performance information in the local companies that issue the purchase orders.
Note

Before you can use central contracts, the companies must share the contract tables by means of logical table linking or by replication.

If you share the contract lines table, the Use Corporate Purchase Contracts check box in the Purchase Contract Parameters (tdpur0100m300) session must have the same value for all companies.

For more information, refer to:

  • User's Guide for Multicompany Structures (U9504 US)
  • User's Guide for Multicompany Table Sharing (U9505 US)
Specifying purchase contracts

For more information, refer to Specifying purchase contracts.

Retrieving purchase contracts

For more information, refer to Retrieving purchase contracts.

Purchase contract additional processes

A number of processes do not always occur in the purchase contract procedure, but can be applicable in specific situations.

You can:

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