Sites and offices

Sales offices, purchase offices, and service offices are departments in which master data and settings are defined that relate to administrative processes such as order handling and invoicing.

In an office, data such as order number series, price books, rates, and various default values for orders are maintained. For example, in a purchase office, settings for payment methods, retro-billing, supplier staged payments, and self-billing are maintained. In a sales office, settings related to sales agreements with customers are maintained.

Site settings control the logistics and production processes. In the purchase process, for example, the supplier, the price, the inbound lead times, and the carriers are determined by the site.

In the purchase process, the focus is on the logistics rather than the commercial aspect. The receiving site requires the goods, such as items to be sold to customers or materials needed to produce a finished item. The logistics settings involved in the receipt of the goods are defined at the site.

The item-purchase data by site are mandatory, but the commercial settings defined at the purchase office are only required if they are different from the standard company settings.

In the sales process, it is the other way round: the focus is on the commercial aspect. The logistics data defined for the site do not affect the agreements with the customers. For example, if a delivery of goods is more expensive because they were delivered from a different distribution center, this does not affect the price agreed with the customer. The only thing the customer would notice, is that the customs and other transport documents are different if the goods were shipped from a different country.

The item data related to the customer that are defined in the sales office are mandatory, whereas the logistics item settings defined for the site are only required if they are different from the standard company settings.

An office is a type of department and therefore, an office is linked to a site.

The site at which a purchase, sales, or service office is located can be different from the site for which the office handles the purchase, sales, or service activities.

For example, the New York purchase office is located at the New York site. The New York site is where the staff of the New York purchase office work, but the New York purchase office handles the purchase of materials for the Boston, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh production sites.

Thus the New York site is not involved in the purchase processes that the New York purchase office controls for the Boston, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh sites. But draft contracts, order acknowledgements, and so on, must be sent to the New York site address. Therefore, the site at which an office is located is important for the address, and for overviews showing the locations at which the activities take place.