SAP Sales & Distribution for End Users - Part 3

SAP Customer Master Data - Continued

Lets continue exploring the Tabs available on Customer Master Screens and If time permits, I  will also tell you about the third and important view of customer master which is Company Code Data.

The different tabs available on General data screen are:

Address
Control Data
Marketing
Unloading Points
Export Data
and
Contact Person

Address Tab is self explanatory so I will skip that. Control Data tab is used when you want to establish a link between your customer and vendor. You may have customer who is also a vendor to your organization, using this tab you will be able to link a vendor code to a customer code. Apart from that you can also specify your customer's tax related details on this page.

All other tabs can be used to record general data related to the customer.

Remember General Data is common for all the Sales Areas assigned to a Customer Code.

Please go thru the screenshots below and let me know if you have any questions related to any General Data Tab.

With these screenshots I finish the General Data Description. In the next session I will show you the screens related to Sales Area Data and what all can be entered there.

The Most Important point to remember is that all information entered on these tabs is common for all the sales areas of a customer. Sales Area, if you recall, is nothing but a combination of Distribution Channel and Sales Division. You can assign any number of sales areas to a Customer Master Record as per your business needs.

See you tomorrow with Sales Area Tabs.....

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SAP Sales & Distribution for End Users - Part 2

SAP Sales & Distribution for End Users - Part 2

The Sales and Distribution in SAP from end user's perspective has got 2 parts mainly.

1. Master Data
2. Order Processing

1. Master Data

SAP is a Master Data Driven System. Master Data Under Sales and Distribution module comprises of 2 major things:

A. Customers Related Master Data

B. Other Related Master Data such as Materials, Pricing, Taxes etc.

Customer Related Master Data is the central point of control for following 4 activities in SAP.
Sold to Party
Bill to Party
Ship to Party
Payer Party

These are also called partner functions in SAP. Apart from these there are certain more customer master records such as One Time Customer, Inter Company Customer, Plants etc.

To Create a Customer Master Record one has to follow the SAP Menu as shown in below screen or you can directly type XD01 or VD01 (as the case may be) in the command field on the top left corner of SAP Screen.

When you select VD01 - Sales and Distribution, the system presents you with input screens where you can define sales related master data of a customer. When you select XD01 - Complete the system gives you option to define the company code related master data of a customer. The difference between these 2 is that in VD01 you can define a customer master from Sales Perspective only whereas in XD01 you have the complete master data creation capabilities including defining accounting links.

I will first show you 3 screens which appear after you choose VD01

On the first screen you are required to enter Customer Code (if your system is configured to generate it automatically then this may not be needed), have a look below:

Here you enter the 5 key elements related to Customer Master Record.

Account Group - as mentioned above.
Customer Code
and 3 elements related to Sales Area discussed earlier in this tutorial.

when you click the Ok Button (Tick Mark Button) or press Enter, you get to see the first view of customer master which is called GENERAL DATA. Look at the screen below:

On this page you have multiple tabs where you can fill required information and then click the SALES AREA DATA button (see the red outlined button in the image above). Now you will see the second view of the same customer master record as shown below:

As you can see, SAP gives you multiple tabs on this screen as well.

We will discuss these tabs and creation of a Customer Master Record Centrally (XD01) in the next session....

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SAP Tutorial - The SAP Menu Screen Explained Part 2

On this page I will show you the Status Bar of a SAP Screen and explain about various things on the status bar.

SAP Status Bar

I wanted to show you this area of SAP Screen for 3 things:

1. It can tell you about currently running T-CODE, Program Name, or SAP System Name along with Client Number
2. It can give you a good idea about the time taken to complete a task in SAP
3. It tells you whether you are in INSERT mode or OVERWRITE MODE.

This small Pop up appears when you click the small icon next to where SESSION MANAGER is written on the current screen.

As described on my old posts, you can create your favorite list of frequently used programs / t-codes and that can be your default menu. Have a look at the below screen. It displays my favorite transactions menu.

SAP Favorites Menu Folders

As you can see I have many favorite folders Starting with Year End and ending with Basis. I have multiple sub-folders / sub menus and transactions within these menus / folders. have a look at the screen below:

SAP Favorites Menu - Expanded View

Now it will be clear to you that SAP Menu is like a Windows Explorer tree structure where you have folders and within those folder you can organize sub folders / transactions.

In the next session I will begin the actual Sales and Distribution User Education....

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SAP Tutorial - The SAP Menu Screen Explained

On this page I will tell you about various parts of the SAP Menu and icons, which you saw in previous post. Z36SC4BPJV4E

There are 5 areas of concern visible in this screen. 

1. The menu on top which says Menu, Edit, Favorites ....
2. The Command Bar, this is where you can type a short code to execute a sap program, if you don't want to follow the menu tree path.
3. Next to that are small icons forming up the Standard Toolbar.
4. The Title Bar
5. The Application Toolbar

There is a status bar also at the bottom of screen which is not visible in this screen, I will show you that in next post.




 

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SAP Sales & Distribution for End Users - Part 1

SAP Sales and Distribution for End Users - Part 1

In this section we will describe the routine tasks followed / performed in Sales and Distribution Component of SAP.

Before we proceed into Sales and Distribution, let me give you some idea about the SAP Graphical User Interface (GUI).

SAP GUI is a program which you are required to install on desktop / laptops in order to be able to access SAP ERP systems.

Once installed, the shortcut to SAP GUI look is like the image below:

When you start the program by double clicking this shortcut you may get to see a windows as shown below:

You can see that there are 4 SAP Server Connections already defined in the window above. As discussed earlier, the general SAP Landscape consists of 4 Servers and connection to all 4 servers is defined in this. You can log in into any or all of these servers as per your requirement (all at the same time too).

When you double click any connection, the SAP Logon Screen appears as below, and you are required to choose the Client Number, your username, and password. Your Username and Password will be assigned by your System Administrator.

after entering the required details simply press enter and you will get inside SAP System's Menu. The menu that appears after successful log on depends on the your Role assigned to you by your SAP System Administrator. A Typical SAP Menu looks like the screen below:

On these Pages we will be describing only SAP SALES related activities, so let me show you how a typical SAP SALES MENU looks like.

Please note the Menu Header text which says "SAP Easy Access   Sales" and now the SAP Menu contains items related to Sales module. All other menu items are no more visible.

This means the menu is customizable and your SAP System Administrator (or you yourself) can change the way your normal SAP Menu appears every time you log in.

In the next post I will describe various parts of this screen and then we will move forward on SAP Sales and Distribution Learning Path.

SAP Main Menu & Icons Explained.......

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SAP Tutorial - Basic Configuration

As promised here are some screenshots from the customization.

To start SAP Customization you can follow the menu path as shown in the image below

or you can type the Transaction Code SPRO in the command field at the top left corner of the screen. The Customizing Menu (also called the IMG - Impementation Guide) looks like the image below:

 

You can click on the clock icon in front of any menu item to start that part of customization. We will click the "Edit, Copy, Delete, Check Company Code" menu item (shown in picture below)

 

Once you click it, a new pop up window appears as below

 

Now you have to double click on Edit Company Code Data. Another window will appear containing already defined company codes (remember I had told you that SAP gives you some configuration settings along with some master data). Have a look at the screen below.

You can see a buttons toolbar and a table containing Company Codes and Company Names. You can select any row in this table and click the Details button (or press Ctrl-Shift-F2) to see details about that row.  See the screen below

We had selected Company Code 1000, SF Corp Limited, and then we clicked Details button, now we see the details of that row. Here we can see that SF CORP LTD is in DELHI and Country is IN for India, Primary Currency is INR and Primary Language is EN - English.

For many customizing screens, direct jump codes or commands are available and you don't have to open the IMG to access those screens, but for some there are not short codes, commands and you have to open IMG to access them.

I hope by now, you have got some idea about SAP and its configuration. My goal is to teach you both parts of SAP (Use and Operations, Configuration and Customization). From next session onwards the focus will be diverted on Core Business Components (eg. FI, SD, PP, MM) and you will be able to choose your area of interest for further learning. 

My Advice to you at this point of time, learn and master any one of the core modules. Do not attempt to learn everything as that may be highly confusing and less productive. 

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SAP Tutorial - The First Step

Organization Structure - Illustration

As promised yesterday, here is the sample organization Structure

 

Lets have a closer look at this. As you can see, we have created at the top a Client numbered 777, this is the first thing that user's will be asked when accessing SAP (i.e., in which client they want to work). Right now there is no other client only one called 777, SF Corp. Ltd.

There are 4 Accounting related Areas defined on top, Controlling Area, Chart of Accounts, Chart of Depreciation, and Credit Control Area. All of these are assigned to a company code called 1000 (again SF Corp Ltd.). SF Corp Ltd has only one Purchasing Organization and 3 purchasing groups, it has got 3 physical locations where it stores materials and that is why we created 3 plants numbered 1000,2000, and 3000. Each of these physical locations have logical partitions of materials so we created Storage Locations in each of these plants called FG00 for Manufactured Goods, RM00 for all Raw Materials, and MA00 for Traded Finished Goods. We also created 3 Shipping Points from which sales dispatches take place, one for each plant. 

There is a Sales Area Defined for Company Code 1000, which comprises of Sales Organization Number 1000, Distribution Channel Number 10, and Division Number 10. SF Corp Ltd has got sales offices in 3 Metro Cities hence creation of 3 sales offices and 3 Sales Groups was done. In current Chart you see we have only one Sales Area. If SF Corp was selling their goods thru different sales channels then we would have created multiple Distribution Channels and if they had more than one product line and if their reporting needed was to have product line was reports, then may be we would have created more divisions. Currently they have only one product line which is one brand of plastic bottles in different shapes and sizes. They cater to the market using their dealers network spread across country. 

I gave you a sample Org Structure on the this page. There are many more things that I could have included but didn't, purely for the sake of simplicity. At this stage I want to keep things as simple as possible so that you are not confused and we can get long at a faster pace for learning SAP. From this moment onwards, this blog will take 2 major directions. On one hand I will try to teach you about basic configuration and the other will be helping you in the day-to-day operations.

We already know that there are many components within SAP viz. FI, SD, PP, MM, QM, HR etc. We will focus on 4 core areas of operations viz FI (which includes Accounts Receivable - AR, Accounts Payable - AP, Asset Management - AA, CO- Controlling, PA - Profitability Analysis), SD (Which include Sales Order Processing), PP (Entire Production Planning and Controlling), MM (Materials Management).You also know that these components are tightly integrated in such a way that data posted into 1 module may get updated in corresponding module automatically, without any need to re-enter that.

Tomorrow we will see, how some of this was configured in SAP.....

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