Overview of purchase contract handling

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

The agreements can be registered at these 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 tab in the Purchase Schedule Parameters (tdpur0100m500) session and on the Buy-from BP Search Orders tab in the Purchase Order Parameters (tdpur0100m400) 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

In a multicompany structure, you can specify central contracts and corporate purchase contracts. For more information, refer to Purchase contracts in a multisite structure.

Specifying purchase contracts

Before you can specify purchase contracts:

  1. Select the Contracts check box in the Procurement Parameters (tdpur0100m000) session.
  2. Specify the purchase contract parameters in the Purchase Contract Parameters (tdpur0100m300) session.

For more information, refer to Specifying purchase contracts.

Retrieving purchase contracts

For more information, refer to Retrieving purchase contracts.

Additional processes

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

For more information, refer to Purchase contracts - additional processes.

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