First Steps in SAP S/4HANA Sales and Distribution (SD)

2.1 Order in the court

Vanessa Roberts, a senior customer service representative for Brand X, greeted Lauren as she pulled up a chair to join Vanessa at her work cubicle. “These are the orders we received yesterday that I haven’t entered in the system yet,” said Vanessa, pointing to a stack of papers.

“Normally, I’d have these finished, but ever since we’ve gotten SAP we’re struggling to catch up,” she continued.

“Ok, well, I’m just going to watch what you do, and then hopefully be able to help a little bit,” said Lauren, logging on to her new company laptop.

She opened her web browser and pasted in the URL for the SAP system from her training manual. She entered her user ID and password, and logged on (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1: Fiori logon screen

Once she was logged on, she saw the screen shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2: Fiori Launchpad

She knew from her training materials that this was the ’launchpad’ and that each one of these square ‘tiles’ would allow her to do different things in the system. What she wanted to do now was to help Vanessa enter sales orders, but she initially couldn’t see anything representing that on her screen. She scrolled down further and found the tile that she wanted (see Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3: Create Sales Orders tile

She clicked on the Create Sales Orders tile and up popped the Create Sales document screen (see Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4: Create Sales Document screen

Ok, that wasn’t too hard, she thought. But what’s all this stuff here?…Order Type, Sales Organization, Distribution Channel….what should she put in those fields?

Vanessa saw the puzzled look on Lauren’s face and explained, “We’re going to be putting in regular orders, which is code ZOR. Then, we always put in 1710, 10, 00 for Sales Organization, Distribution Channel, and Division, because we’re in the US.”

Lauren entered the information, as instructed, on her screen (see Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5: Create sales order

Lauren wondered what all this meant, but Vanessa was already handing her orders to input. “Here’s an order to start with. Let’s have you do that one and then if you have any questions, I can help you.”

Lauren looked at the paper she had been given.

She looked back to her screen, ready to begin.

She clicked on the screen, and nothing happened. She double clicked, still nothing. She didn’t see any icons or buttons that looked promising.

Figure 2.6: Create sales order

The only thing that looked remotely helpful was the More menu button (see Figure 2.6), so she clicked on it.

Figure 2.7: Create sales order

A dropdown menu appeared (see Figure 2.7), and she followed the menu path Sales Document • Create. However, Create was in gray text, and clicking on it didn’t do anything. Vanessa saw her clicking away and smiled. “Yeah, lovely SAP. You actually just have to press Enter (or Continue) and that takes you into the order.” She pressed Enter and the Sales Order screen popped up, as shown in Figure 2.8.

Figure 2.8: Create sales order

Whoa, there is a lot going on here, thought Lauren. Look at all those fields and buttons. She could feel her pulse quicken. She didn’t want to appear clueless to Vanessa. She looked back at the paper order form she had in front of her.

The customer name was at the top of the form, so that seemed like a good place to start. She looked back at the SAP screen scanning for a ‘Customer’ field.

Vanessa could see Lauren’s hesitation and said, “How about I enter this one for you first?”

“Ok, I think that will help,” replied Lauren.

“Ok, the customer’s name is Fast Bikes, so we go over here to the Sold-to Party field and look up their number”, explained Vanessa (see Figure 2.9).

Figure 2.9: Sold-To Party field

“We do that by clicking on the little magnifying glass, and then the search screen pops up” (see Figure 2.10).

Figure 2.10: Customer search screen

“The heading at the top tells us which search we are using. In this case, we are searching for Customers per Sales Group,” Vanessa clarified. “The screenshot shows that there are some other choices along the top as well, such as Customers (General) and Customers by Address Attributes. Basically, the choices just give us different fields to use when searching for a customer. I like to use Customers per Sales Group because it shows only the customers in our sales organization and we don’t see a bunch of other stuff that isn’t relevant.”

Lauren nodded, but wasn’t quite clear about what this meant. Vanessa continued, “So, we need the customer number and if you don’t know it, then you go to this name field here and put in part of the customer name and an asterisk. The asterisk is key. Otherwise, you’ll have a hard time finding the customer because you have to know the exact full name, and I mean exact. It’s just easier to use the asterisk, which just means it will find anything after it. Look, I’ll show you what I mean.”

Figure 2.11: Customer Search

“In the name field, I type in fast and then the asterisk symbol” (see Figure 2.11).” The system can then find any customer starting with ‘fast’, such as ‘fast bikes’, ‘fast times’, and so on. Then, we press Enter and get the search results” (see Figure 2.12).

Figure 2.12: Customer search tab

“It only found one customer, Fast Bikes Inc., so that means there’s only one that starts with ‘fast’. That’s the one we want, so we just double click on it and it brings the customer number into the Sold-To Party field” (see Figure 2.13).

Figure 2.13: Sold-To Party field

“So there it is. If we press Enter, it also fills out the Ship-To Party field” (see Figure 2.14).

Figure 2.14: Customer reference field

“Oops, my mistake. It asks us first for the PO. This is where we put in the customer’s PO number. SAP calls it Cust. Reference, meaning that it’s our customer’s reference number for the order they are placing with us. Normally, that’s the customer’s purchase order. Their purchase order equals our sales order, right? They’re buying from us with their purchase order and we are selling to them with our sales order”.

“So”, Vanessa explained, “we enter the customer’s PO, and then it fills out the number in the Ship-to Party field” (see Figure 2.15).

Figure 2.15: Customer data

“See? There’s the address, in New York, and there’s the Customer PO number I put in. Got it?”

Lauren nodded. That seemed pretty straightforward.

Vanessa continued, “So now we want to put in the materials. On this PO the customer wants 10 of our bike glasses, material MZ-FG-R200. You just scroll down the order and enter the material here in the line items section” (see Figure 2.16).

Figure 2.16: Sales order line item—Material entry

Vanessa did a quick scroll down on the screen and typed in the material number in the Material field. “You enter the quantity of 10 and hit Enter, and then you’re all set” (see Figure 2.17).

Figure 2.17: Line item

Lauren saw that a description for the material had appeared, as well as lots of other information. She also saw that there were spaces for other lines, where she guessed more materials could be entered.

“Now, you just click on the Save button at the bottom right, and your order is saved. It also tells you if anything’s missing. The system then tells you your order number. This one is 32131.” Lauren saw at the bottom left of the screen that a little message had popped up (see Figure 2.18).

Figure 2.18: Order saved

“You can then choose Display or Change (depending on which mode you are in) and look at the order you just created” (see Figure 2.19).

Figure 2.19: Sales order change screen

“And there it is,” Vanessa concluded.

Yes, there it is, Lauren thought to herself. But what was all this other stuff on the screen? Net Value, Delivery Block, and Total Weight? Where did that come from?

Vanessa grabbed a stack of orders and passed them to Lauren. “As many of these as you can get in would be great. Let’s meet up again around 3 pm to see where we are, ok?”