Using Regular Vendor Functionality in SAP

This was such a a small thing and I only found it very recently. Basically, when you tick an inforecord as regular vendor, even if you have multiple inforecord for the same material code, in ME57, you will not get a list of inforecords to select from. Purchasing requisitions are automatically allocated to the inforecord with the “Regular Vendor” tick. This can save significant amount of time for the person who is handling purchasing. This also will increase accuracy of the assigning process significantly.

In case if you want to assign a particular purchasing requisition to a vendor other than the regular vendor, you can use the “manual assignment” functionality in ME57.

You have to enable this functionality by plant in the config. Below is the process.

 Config settings

Select RegularVendor Config

 

Select Plant for the Regular Vendor Setting

Select Regular Vendor Config _ Select The Plant You want to use this functionality

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before Selecting Regular Vendor A List Will be displayed with all the possible options. User will have to select by double clicking on the desired vendor

Before Selecting Regular Vendor A List Will be displayed with all the possible options. User will have to select by double clicking on the desired vendor

 Selecting Regular Vendor In Info Record

SelectingRegularVendor_InfoRecord

 

After Selecting One InfoRecord as “Regular Vendor”, user no longer gets the list, although they have multiple inforecords. Purchase Requisitions are automatically allocated when “Assign Automatically” is selected.

After Selecting Regular Vendor In InfoRecord. Purchase Requisitions are directly allocated

 

HOW TO Maintain the grid conversions

HOW TO Maintain the grid conversions

(A post i promised to put up long long ago, finally is here. You can find original post on Grid Conversions here)

-> Select the path below

SPRO -> Logistic General -> AFS Material Grids -> Conversion

 

Here you have to do two things.

-> Define the conversion type. If you want to say maintain conversions based on the different languages, you will have to maintain one conversion type per language.

-> Define which conversion type is called in which scenario. You can basically use  the conversion based on the material, Customer/Vendor and user or any of those combinations.

Now you have to find the characteristic(s) you have used in your grid.

 

-> GoTo CT04

-> Click on the conversion button

-> Click New Entries Button and Maintainthe line and the grid entry against your base value. Line enrty is how the value is displayed when the value is displayed in a line entry. Grid entry determines how the converted value is displayed in the grid display.

 

-> Now you may use your conversations in the depending documents like PO, SO and materials. Just select the Doc. Conv. Type button to change the conversion type to which you prefer.

Note, the base value is set at “S”, but the size shows as “X”. This is the line entry value we assigned in the characteristic for this conversion type.

If you click the grid entry and go in it will show “Z” as the size mapped for base size “S”. This is because we maintained the grid entry size as “Z” in characteristic. Do not get confused. This is a 3D Grid. I have only converted one of these characteristics.

Now you can maintain the values in converted grid value. In the case of below, you maintain the “X RED1” and “X GRE1”  instead of “S RED1” and “S GRE1”.

 

How to maintain grid conversion defaults in vendor master

Go to XK02 -> Environment -> AFS Additional Data

Maintain the default value under vendor ID

 

How to maintain the grid conversion in customer master

 

Maintain AFS Additional Data

 

SPECIAL NOTE:

In the newer releases of AFS the conversion at material level is not made active(this field is grayed out). I found the note 1322001 in this regard, which explains the steps to get the functionality back only in AFS environment if you need it. Please refer SAP NOTE 1322001 for more details.

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If your MRP is not working, this is the last check

If your MRP is not working how would you troubleshoot it? It is very simple than you think. Check each source of demand and sources of supply. Check whether there is anything wrong. If you are running AFS in MTO (Made To Order) model, then this means, checking your SO for any problems, Checking your BOM for any issues, checking for the planning horizons and checking for planned orders and so on. But if you have checked all these but you can find nothing, when it seems like you have checked every possible options, you have one more check to be done. This check is really important if the MRP is not running for any of your SO (or other sources of demands) or for any of your materials. The check is the number range check.

Yes, one of the MRP issues, I found few times in my consulting carrier happens due to the exhaustion of numbers allocated. For an example, if you run out of numbers in allocated planed order number series, MRP will not be able to create a planned order. Same logic applies for the Purchase requisitions too. Check this and if the numbers are exhausted or nearing the upper limit of the allocated number series, you have to extend your number series or allocate a new number series for the document type in question.You can check these settings using transaction OMI2. I hope you found this piece of advice interesting. If you like to contribute to the AFS knowledge pool, please write to me at azwath@yahoo.com

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SAP AFS 6.0 CT04 – Missing Relevance and Conversion buttons

I though this quick tip might help you.

We upgraded one of our instances from AFS version 3.0b to 6.0 some time back. We had few issues with migrating categories. But after migrating, we never had a need to create a new category in 6.0 environment. But when we had to we faced few issues.

To configure a category you have to first create a “Characteristic”. Then in SPRO, you have to create a category structure and then create a coverage strategy and assign the coverage strategy to the category structure. Configuration node can be found following the path SPRO -> Logistics – General – >AFS Categories.

 

We followed the process but the results did not work as we intended. With the help of AFS support team, we found Relevance and Conversion buttons were missing on the CT04 screen and as a result configuration could not be completed properly. So they recommended the SAP NOTE 1041015 and it solved the issue for us. It put the buttons on the CT04 screen and enabled us to complete the configuration.

Caution: Please read through SAP documentation before implementing notes. If required seek the SAP support. These steps might not work, or even might do harm in your case.