Difference Between General Item Category Group and Item Category Group

Introduction Sometimes you might have noticed that there are two fields in the material master called, 1. General item Category Group – MARA / MTPOS_MARA You will see this field in the “Basic Data 1” tab as well as “Sales: Sales Org 2” tab. 

“Basic Data 1” tab -



“Sales: Sales Org 2” tab –

2. Item Category Group – MVKE / MTPOS

This field is located in the “Sales: Sales Org 2” tab

SAP has provided these two fields to use it for two different requirements. During sales order creation, with the same article, if you want to determine a different item category for a given sales area, then you can use the field “Item Category Group” (MVKE / MTPOS). Since this field is located in the Material master sales data table (MVKE) you can specify different item category groups for each sales area. But the “General item category group” (MARA / MTPOS_MARA) is located in the Material Master General data (MARA) table; you cannot use this field for such a purpose. Important: Priority is always on “Item Category Group” (MVKE / MTPOS) over “General item category group” (MARA / MTPOS_MARA).

As you already aware, the item category in the sales order is determined based on below criteria.  

Sales document type -> From sales order header Item Category Group –> From material master (If “General item category group” (MARA / MTPOS_MARA) is different from “Item Category Group” (MVKE / MTPOS), then system take “Item Category Group” (MVKE / MTPOS).

This is configured in the below IMG path:

System Demo In order to test the functionality of this, let’s take a material which is defined for 2 different sales areas. 

Material – AW01 (Defined with different “MTPOS” values for below two sales areas)

In the item category assignment, I have below customizing.

Now let’s create two sales orders for those two sales areas

Now let’s analyze how the system determines the item category in the sales order line item. I have created a simple Info set Query (Using transaction SQVI) to join table VBAK and VBAP. If you want to see how you can create your own query, please click here.

As shown above, with the same material (AW01) and different sales areas (A300/A1/A1 and A300/A2/A1), I have determined different item categories (TAN and JMT2) to the sales order.

Author: Anupa Wijesinghe E-Mail: [email protected] / [email protected] Website: www.learnsaptips.com View my profile in LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter

Disclaimer This article is done based on my research and readings, unless otherwise stated. The views expressed are my own and not of anyone else. Author accepts no liability for the content of the articles in this website or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. Using this information is at the users own discretion and responsibility.