Sales and Distribution

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Sales and Distribution (SD) includes the business processes used to sell and deliver products and services to customers and business partners . Information about the products and customers (both of which are stored as master data) is used in SD.

To handle these business processes, your company's structure needs to be represented in SAP R/3. For example, if you have a head office and several sales organizations (classed by region or by product, for example), the head office could be represented with a client code, and the sales organizations could be indicated by company codes. Your sales organizations could be broken down further into distribution channels. You might also have a matrix organization in which different divisions exist for different products. Finally, you could have sales areas where the matrixes cross. Figure A.1 illustrates this type of structure.

Plain English

Matrix Organization

Exists when a subgroup in a company belongs to more than one group .

Figure A.1. One way a complex sales organization can be represented for SD in SAP R/3.

CAUTION

Divisions

Your organization might not use all these divisions or might use them a little differently. The structure of your company needs to be accurately represented in SAP R/3 for the system to correctly process sales information.

To get a flavor for SD, follow a typical sale through the system (see Figure A.2). You could process a sale in many other ways.

Figure A.2. A typical flow in the Sales process.

The following list outlines functions and benefits of SAP R/3's SD module :

SD adapts to various scenarios. A customer might simply call and place an order, or there might be an existing contract or scheduling agreement with a customer that predefines price and delivery.
You can price orders manually.
SD provides for the processing of exceptions such as returns and free deliveries.
You can create a sales order with reference to a quotation. All the appropriate values from the quotation will be copied into the sales order .

The main documents used in SD include the sales order, inquiry, quotation, outline agreement (contract and scheduling), return, no charge delivery, delivery, debit memo, credit memo, billing document, and info record . The main master files used by SD are Customer Master, Material Master, and Inventory Master.

Plain English

Info Record

Combines customer and product information. It lists things specific to a certain product for a certain customer. For example, you could use an info record to track your customer's product number.

SD reports the quantities to MM to ensure that stock is reserved or ordered. SD also forwards billing information to FI for credit checks and receivables postings .

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