Introduction
This book provides a deep, working understanding of the essential concepts and customization settings related to the SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) application. SD is one of the most popular modules of the SAP ERP software and indeed the most interesting one to implement.
Over the years, we have worked on a variety of projects ranging from global implementation, support, upgrades, acquisition and mergers, rollouts, and integration. We’ve had the opportunity to study the business requirements of different industries and the best practices in customizing SAP to meet different challenges. Our goal was to bring the knowledge that we acquired during those projects to you through this book.
As the title implies, this book is intended for people who want to learn how to configure the SAP Sales and Distribution application. Whether you are a beginner who wants to make career in SAP as a SAP SD consultant, a business analyst from the IT/IS extended team of your organization, a member of the project implementation team responsible for implementing SD, a production support team member responsible for supporting the Sales and Distribution module after implementation, an experienced consultant from another SAP module who wants to learn SAP SD, or an experienced SAP SD consultant who wants to learn what’s new in ECC 6 or how to handle some other functionality, you will find valuable information in this book related to customizing SAP SD.
If you are new to SAP, the learning curve can be steep. In this book, we tried to reduce that learning curve by providing easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions and case studies from a fictitious company called Galaxy Musical Instruments Inc.
You can use this book in several ways. The most straightforward way is to start at the beginning and proceed chapter by chapter. We have logically ordered the chapters according to the processes in a standard sales cycle. Each topic covers the prerequisite configurations before discussing how to configure a new submodule. We start with the basic concepts and travel all the way through to some very advanced configuration topics and techniques by the end of the book. If you already have configuration experience, you can skip around from chapter to chapter and follow the step-by-step instructions for a topic of interest in its individual chapter.
How Is This Book Different??t??
This book is different from others on the market in the following ways:
- The book covers the functionality offered by SAP in the latest version: ECC 6.0.
- It provides an overview of enhancement packages, which are the SAP road maps for delivering innovations in the coming years.
- It illustrates all the concepts with a real-life case study that runs through all the chapters of the book. This provides a cohesive picture of how a real-life organization can leverage SD to meet its requirements.
- It contains important tips, useful notes, and helpful links to other resources, such as SAP Service Marketplace (OSS) notes, where applicable.
Here is a glance at what’s in each chapter:
Chapter 1: Introduction to Sales and Distribution
Chapter 2: Enterprise Structure Brings you to the customization world and provides easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions to help you set up your own SAP SD enterprise structure. To demonstrate the customization, we’ll set up the enterprise structure using the business requirement example from our fictitious company, Galaxy Musical Instruments.
Chapter 3: Master Data in SD
Chapter 4: Partner, Text, and Output Determination Takes your learning to the next level. You’ll learn about the role of partners, output, and text determination in the overall sales cycle, followed by how to customize the same to meet your business requirement.
Chapter 5: Pricing and Tax Determination Introduces you to the pricing and tax determination world. Here you’ll learn about various pricing elements and will configure them to determine the final price at which the sales transaction can take place.
Chapter 6: Availability Check, Transfer of Requirements, and Backorders Covers the available-to-promise functionality in detail. Promising accurate and reliable dates for delivery to your customers is a key element of the order fulfillment process in today’s competitive environment, and this chapter talks about all the things you need to know in order to customize your SAP SD application to provide this reliability.
Chapter 7: Sales Covers the customization and sales cycle flow for a variety of sales documents types that are available in standard SAP. You will learn about contracts, standard orders, third-party orders, debit/credit notes, consignments, warranty and maintenance contracts, quantity contracts, and so on.
Chapter 8: Shipping and Transportation Covers shipping- and transportation-related activities in detail. This chapter covers topics such as delivery documents, routing, picking, packing, transportation, transfer orders, and shipment documents.
Chapter 9: Billing Covers customer invoicing-related topics such as billing process, milestone billing, periodic billing, invoice lists, rebates, debit/credit notes, and payment card setup in SAP SD.
Chapter 10: Account Assignment and Revenue Recognition
Chapter 11: Credit Management Covers credit management in SAP SD in detail.
Chapter 12: Material Determination, Listing, Exclusion, and Proposal Talks about various material-related functionalities in detail. This includes topic such as material determination, automatic product proposal, customer–material info records, and so on.
Chapter 13: Serial Numbers and Batch Management Covers the serial number and batch management topics in detail.
Chapter 14: Advanced Techniques Talks about various technical topics such as user exits, BAPI, EDI, IDOCS, and ABAP queries. This chapter also covers switch framework and enhancement packs in detail.
The appendix at the end of the book contains valuable information about transaction codes, database tables, and recommended web resources for further learning.
All through this book, we will use a case study of a fictitious company called Galaxy Musical Instruments; it’s a trading organization that deals in musical instruments as well as related media and accessories, with operations in the United States and Mexico. This end-to-end case study will ensure continuity and help you understand how an organization can put SD’s functionalities to use.
Here is the organization structure for Galaxy Musical Instruments.
