General sales data

Specifying data to track order changes and to determine the reason for the changes

Sales orders can be dynamic documents, as a sold-to business partner’s requirements can change during the life cycle of the order process. In the sales master data, you can specify information to track these adjustments and the reasons why changes were made. Change codes and acknowledgement codes are used to track various changes to an order. Although this functionality was designed to work specifically with EDI, a company without EDI functionality can also use these codes to record changes.

You can use change codes to maintain information on order changes that are tracked for historical purposes. You can use acknowledgement codes to manually add change information to the order document, after which these changes are communicated to the sold-to business partner through a sales order acknowledgement.

To maintain and track changes:

1. Use the Change Reasons (tdsls0197m000) session to maintain codes that represent the change reasons, which can be assigned to a changed order or an order acknowledgement to clarify why a change is made. This information can be tracked for historical reporting.
2. Use the Change Types (tdsls0198m000) session to specify change types. These types indicate the kind of change for a sales order or order acknowledgement, such as change order line, add order line, and change header data. The change types are assigned to the sales order after the change is made to the order.
3. Use the Sales Order Parameters (tdsls0100s400) session to specify various default change codes and change types, which are defaulted to the sales order line in case of changes.
4. Use the Sales Order - Change Order Sequence Numbers (tdsls0153m000) session to specify optional numbers that are used to group the occurrence of changes to an order or order acknowledgment. This session is usually accessed from the sales order screen, as the actual order number must be specified.
5. Use the Sales Acknowledgments (tdsls0154m000) session to specify sales order acknowledgements and the destination of the codes, which can be Header, Line, or Any. The acknowledgement code includes a group of information, which is displayed on the sales acknowledgment document. This code can include the reasons for a changed sales order.
6. Use the Sales Acknowledgment Assignments (tdsls0155m000) session to specify the information to be included in the sales order acknowledgment document as indicated by the acknowledgment code. You can assign acknowledgment codes to specific fields on a sales order line, which are the default codes when a change occurs to a specific field. You must also specify the action (Add line, Change line) and the source (EDI, Manual, or Any) that result in the acknowledgment code assignment. For example, if you manually add an order line to an existing sales order and the order quantity is changed, the specified acknowledgment code is assigned to the sales order line.

Specifying reasons for order blocking

It may be required to block sales order entry for a business partner, or to stop the processing of a business partner’s sales order. You can specify the conditions for automatically blocking a sales order and specify hold reasons stating why the order was blocked. This gives you time to review the order and to take appropriate action. Many reasons can exist for placing a hold on a sold-to business partner’s order. For instance, sold-to business partners might have exceeded their credit limit, have overdue invoices, or can be disputing an invoice.

If you want to use the order blocking functionality:

1. Specify hold reasons in the Hold Reasons (tcmcs2110m000) session.
2. In the Hold Reasons by Business Partner Type (tdsls0593m000) session, specify the action to take when a sales order line is blocked for a particular reason, which depends on the business partner type and hold reason.
3. In the Sales Order Parameters (tdsls0100s400) session, specify when orders must be automatically blocked. On the Blocking tab, specify standard blocking situations. On the Reasons tab, attach a reason for a blocking situation.
4. In the Block As of Activity field of the Sales Order Type (tdsls0694m000) session, specify the step at which the sales order procedure is interrupted automatically. When an order (line) is blocked, the procedure for this order can only be partially carried out. If a blocking step is not specified in this session, the order procedure is not interrupted.

Specifying order priority simulations

If you want to use order priority simulations:

1. In the Sales Order Parameters (tdsls0100s400) session, set the Order Priority Method field to Simulation. Consequently, the order priority is calculated based on the values of the fields specified in the simulation code.
2. In the Priority Simulations (tdsls4524m000) session, specify the codes that are used to create priority simulations. A priority simulation includes an identifying code and description, a sort sequence, and a sort mode. The sort sequence and the sort mode are criteria by which sales orders are sorted. The way the orders are sorted determines the priority. To create a simulation, the sorting criteria specified in the simulation code are applied to a group of sales orders, which are selected by the user. You can select six fields for each simulation code to sort sales orders. Default fields are retrieved from the sales order lines, but you can also use fields from sales orders and business partners.