Item Category Determination

Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2 Requirement ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Solution – Enhance item category determination ........................................................................................ 3 Important Technical Notes ........................................................................................................................... 5

Introduction When you create a sales order in SAP, the item category is determined based on below parameters.   

Sales Document type – From the Sales order header Item Category Group – From the Material Master Usage – From Customer Material Info record

Based on above 3 fields, system will automatically determine the corresponding item category in the sales order. This assignment is maintained in the below IMG node. IMG Path: Sales and Distribution / Sales / Sales Documents / Sales Document Item / Assign Item Categories

In the same IMG node, SAP has provided an option of having multiple item categories for the same combination of sales document type and Item category group. But those are categorized as “MItC Manual Item Category”. If any item category is assigned as “MItC”, then user is allowed to change the item category to that in the sales order item manually. Automatic determination of item category will happen only for the item category assigned in the field “DfltC – Default Item Category”.

Requirement But let’s say due to possible user errors, business does not want users to change it manually, but the system to determine an item category classified as ““MItC - Manual Item Category” automatically based on a pre-defined criteria. For example, if the sales organization is “A100” system should determine the item category as “TAN” (Which is already defined as “DfltC – Default Item Category”) for sales document type “OR”. This is not an issue as SAP standard will always determine this based on above customizing. But if the sales organization is “A300”, then system should determine item category as “JMT2”. This has to be done automatically. (Business does not want users to do it manually due to possible user errors)

Solution – Enhance item category determination You can use below user exit in SAP to determine item category in the sales order.  

Include - MV45AFZB User Exit - FORM USEREXIT_SOURCE_DETERMINATION

What you need to do is, ask your ABAP developer to maintain the required combination (Sales Organization / Order Type / Item Category) in a “Z” table.

Eg:

In the above user exit, insert an ABAP code to check the table for a valid record with the sales organization and sales document type. If there is a valid record in the table, switch the VBAP–PSTYV from the table field – Item Category. Let’s use the debugger to do same! First I will create a breakpoint in the above mentioned user exit and then create the sales order with sales document type “OR” and sales organization “A300” As you see below, the required fields were populated;

I can manually override the item category using the option “JMT2”

-> This will switch the VBAP-PSTYV to

Now if I execute the code, the sales order should get item category as “JMT2”

As mentioned above, you can simply override the default item category in the sales order for a predefined criterion.

Important Technical Notes Let’s say you want to achieve the same functionality with some characteristics that are coming from the material master. Eg: It is possible to create a sales order with multiple division articles. In the sales order header you can have sales area as A300 / A1 / A1, but you can add materials which has division “A2” to same sales order. Required functionality is to switch the item category based on below criteria;    

Sales Document type - From sales order header -> If sales order type = OR Sales organization – From sales order header -> If sales organization = A300 Distribution Channel - From sales order header -> If Distribution Channel = A1 Division - From Material master -> If material division = A2

In that case, you need to have below “Z” table entry in place.

Now let’s try in the debug mode to see which fields we need to check; As shown below, material master data is not available in the VBAP table yet. It is only available in the structure “MAAPV”. Therefore you need to check with the field “MAAPV-SPART” and not “VBAP-SPART”.

With this check, now you can override the item category of the sales order item.

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

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