In very general terms, there are two kinds of data in any system:
Master data—This data is relatively fixed in your system. Your company could continue to run for days without creating new master data. Not all master data has the word master in its name. Customer Master, Personnel Master, and Chart of Accounts are all examples of master data. (These are discussed in more detail in Lesson 15, "Using Master Data.")
Transaction data— This data is made up of the normal day-to-day business transactions in a system. If you couldn't create these documents, your business would come to a stop. Purchase orders, invoices, and production orders are all examples of transaction data. With transaction data, there's usually a chain of documents involved in any process. For example, a document may start as an inquiry from a customer, be converted into a quotation, and then work its way through the system to finally become an invoice and a payment.
It's important to know where the documents you work with come from and go to so that you understand the implications of any errors or problems that might be found in the document. Table 22.1 lists the common SAP R/3 documents and their purpose, as well as the R/3 modules that use the information, its predecessor, and some subsequent documents. Information in each document may have been copied in from a predecessor document, or may have information carried forward into a subsequent document.
Caution
This List Isn't Definitive Many documents and relationships in SAP R/3 aren't included in this list. SAP R/3's Business Object Repository lists more than 170 different kinds of business objects. (A purchase order is an example of a business object.) Although this list isn't comprehensive, it covers the most common objects.
Table 22.1 The Most Common SAP R/3 Documents
Each kind of document has variations in how it can be created or processed. For example, a purchase order can be created from scratch, from a requisition, from the MRP process, and so on.
In this lesson, you learned about the most common documents, that documents are often shared between SAP R/3 modules, and that most documents either trigger subsequent documents or are triggered by earlier documents. In the next lesson, you learn what the industry solutions are and how they may affect you.
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