Introduction to SAP SD Module (SAP Sales & Distribution)

Introduction to SD Customer Master Data

Master data forms the basis of all transactional processing. This is especially true for Sales and Distribution processing. Master data creation, ownership, and maintenance are the responsibility of all modules. The structure and data within a company's master data govern how the system is to respond to future transactions or analyses.

Customer Master Data

Customer master data in SD is divided into three main areas.

Basic Data This data remains the same for the customer regardless of which organization he buys from your company. Examples of this type of data are the customer's address and contact details.

Organizational Data

This is customer data related to your organizational structure—for example, the customer may prefer stock to be delivered from plant YX01 when an order is placed in a specific sales area. (Sales area is explained later.) The customer may then wish stock to be delivered from a plant closer to his location YX02 when a sales order is placed in another sales area. A customer master record may exist for many sales areas. You can then have different data for the different sales areas, even though you are taking the order from the same customer and using the same customer number.

Company Code Data

A customer master record must also have company-related data. This data is used for financial accounting purposes. An example of company code data is the reconciliation account. A customer master record may exist for more than one company code—for example, when you have more than one company in your organization and the customer can buy from any one of them.

A sales area is a specific combination of a sales organization, a distribution channel, and a division. The sales organization is the legal entity responsible for the sale. You usually have a sales organization for each company code. The distribution channel is the way you send your product to the market—for example, you may have a retail distribution channel and a wholesale distribution channel. A division is a product division—for example, original equipment or spare parts. The combination of these represents the sales area. So when a customer places an order with sales organization ABC in the retail distribution channel for ware parts, you have identified the sales area. The processes may differ when a customer purchases from the same sales organization and the same division, but is purchasing wholesale, so the sales area would then be different as well. (Due to the distribution channel being different, that is wholesale.)

The customer master sales area data allows you to specify different master data (for example different payment terms) based on the sales areas. There are additional forms of customer master data—for example, the customer credit master record, which is related to the customer master record, shown in the below figure. However, these additional forms of master data are not mandatory and are covered in their own chapters in this tutorial.

We describe how to maintain the customizing, inserting, and removing fields, as well as partner functions, of the customer master record later in this chapter.

Enterprise Structure

You must set the Enterprise Structure of your company (commonly referred to as the "organizational data" in SAP) before you can process SD transactions. For example, without a sales area, it is not possible to create a sales order in SAP. This organizational data reflects the structure of your business. Every transaction occurs within this structure. The organizational data is like the steel girders in a building, so setting it up correctly is essential. Once it is set, changing the Enterprise Structure of the business will be time-consuming.

The more thought you give to the organizational structure, the easier mySAP ERP SD sull be to configure and use. You must understand how the business functions and have exhaustive knowledge of the impact of using specific elements to map the company’s organizational structure into my SAP ERP.

Organizational data is comprised of:

What is Sales Organization

An organizational unit that sells and distributes products, negotiates terms of sale and is responsible for these transactions.

What is the Distribution Channel

The channel through which materials or services reach customers. Typical distribution channels include Internet sales, wholesale, retail, and direct sales. You can assign a distribution channel to one or more sales organizations. A customer can be delivered from multiple distribution channels. A material master record can be maintained with the different sales organization and distribution channel views, allowing different data to be accessed—for example, the delivering plant.

What is a Division

Product groups can be defined as a wide-ranging spectrum of products. For every division, you can make customer-specific agreements on, for example, partial deliveries, pricing, and terms of payment. Within a division, you can carry out statistical analyses or set up separate marketing.

The above Figure shows a basic organizational structure. In sales organization 1000, SD business transactions can be carried out for distribution channels 10 and 20, and divisions 01 ad CO_ In sales organization 2000 transactions can only be processed through distribution 10 and divisions 01 and 02. Likewise, transactions in sales organization 3000 can be done through distribution channel 10 division 01.

Sales organizations should be kept to a minimum; try to have only one per company code. You should have a very good business reason to have more than one sales organization per company code. For example, only have another sales organization if the company sells completely differently in an area—for example if sales processed in Los des are handled differently to sales processed in San Francisco.

A rule of thumb is that if the material can be sold in both sales organizations and there is ate no code, then there should only be one sales organization.

Master data records are multiplied by each additional organizational element you have. Thus, 10 customer master records with 2 sales organizations, 2 distribution channels, and 2 divisions would have a total of 80 customer master record views. Add another sales organization and you have 120 customer master record views.

Adding divisions does not multiply the material master views; however, it does multiply the customer master views. For example, add a division to our 80 customer master views and we suddenly have 120 customer master views. However, add the division to the material master views, and we still end up with 80.

TIP To reduce the master data you require, you can combine sales areas for customer master data purposes—see the Implementation Guide (IMG I Sales and Distribution I Master Data I Define Common Distribution Channels (and Division)

We know a sales area is compiled of a sales organization, a distribution channel, and a division. A sales area is used for reporting purposes; all data relevant for sales can be defined per sales area. For example, you can define pricing per sales area, or do your sales information analyses per sales area. You can also control configuration based on the sales area—for example, you can allow some sales processes for one sales area (for example, product samples), but not for another.