What this post is about?
Nothing excites the time-crunched business users more than a productivity hack that has the potential and power to make their lives simple & easy by saving them some time and effort. Knowing these features also gives them edge over others as it boosts their performance. Who doesn’t like a performance boost after all!
Having worked with a wide variety of sales business users, I have compiled the below 10+1 features of SAP S/4 Hana Sales, which I call the productivity boosters for business users. They have helped many business users outshine others and I am confident that these can help you as well. Some of these can be more obvious than others and their power is really manifested in practice.
The Features!
I have compiled these features in the form of a FAQ to make it more readable and intuitive.
Q1: I need to create a new sales order with similar data as for an existing sales order. Can I create my new sales order from this existing sales order so that I don’t have to re-enter all the details again? What are the important things to know here?
Ans: Well, it’s an absolute yes. You can create a brand-new sales order “with reference” to an existing sales order. When you create Sales Order “SO-0021” with reference to Sales Order “SO-0011”, the complete data from SO-0011 is copied over to SO-0021. Here are a few important things to know here:
- A new sales order can also be created with reference to any of these documents – Enquiry, Quotation, Order, Contract, Scheduled Agreement, Billing Document.
- It’s a best practice to create a sales order with reference to Billing Document for creating Return Orders
- You can do "Copy" or "Item Selection" for creating the new order. Copy refers to copying all details from the source order. Item Selection allows us to choose the items and quantities into the new order from the source order.
- Document flow is maintained for the reference orders.
- Remember, while copying from one order to another, Customer Reference is NOT copied.
Q2: I need to update Shipping Point for a bunch of line items in my sales order. Can I make updates on all or multiple line items in a sales order in one step? How? What other data can be updated?
Ans: Yes, and more! You can make changes in one step for all or a set of line items in a sales order. Here is how it can be done:
- Select the Items on which you want the change to apply.
- Click on More -> Edit -> Fast Change of -> Select here the parameter that want to change, shipping point in this case.
Here are some of the examples of the fields where this can be done:
- Reason for Rejection
- Delivery Block
- Billing Block
- Shipping Point
- Delivery Date
- Delivery Priority
- Plant
- Route
- Cancellation Date
Q3: I find myself toggling between screens looking into customer, material, and order details in separate screens while creating my sales order. Can I jump directly into Customer or Material record from within a Sales Order?
Ans: Absolutely. Customer Master and Material Master are the two main building blocks of a sales order. And you can jump straight into these from within a sales order. Here is how:
- Press F6 to jump straight into Customer Master Data
- Press F8 to jump straight into Material Master Data
Quick, isn’t it?
Q4: I have a bunch of sales orders and I need to update Plant field for all of them. Can I mass change a certain field in a bunch of sales order together?
Ans: Yes. Transaction VA05 is the friend you need here. VA05 allows you to do a mass change on several orders together. It works for multiple fields like the ones below:
- New Plant
- New Material
- New Price Determination
- New Currency
- Change Partner
Q5: I created a sales order and I want it to be delivered as part of an existing delivery documents. Can I add my sales order into an existing delivery?
Ans: Yes, that’s possible however, a new sales order can be added to a Delivery only if the Post Goods Issue is not yet done for the delivery.
Follow the path: Menu à Outbound Delivery à Deliver Sales Order
Q6: I created a delivery and need to add a new line item into it. Can I add a new line item into a Delivery Document?
Ans: Yes, that’s possible. This option can be particularly useful when adding packaging materials or material used during shipment in delivery as these materials may not be known in advance at the time of creating the sales order. What’s more, line items can also be deleted in the delivery. However, that’s not a best practice.
Q7: I need to create an invoice out of a delivery however I want to pick a set of items and not all items on the delivery. Can I create an Invoice only for selected items of a delivery? How?
Ans: Yes, use the button Select Lines for selecting the specific line items to be billed out of a delivery.
Q8: Is it feasible to deliver or bill an order immediately? How?
Ans: Yes. This is usually used in Credit/Debit memo processes. Here is how:
- Immediate Delivery: Menu -> Sales Document -> Deliver
- Immediate Billing: Menu -> Sales Document -> Billing
Q9: For one of my delivery documents more than 1 billing docs have been generated which wasn’t expected. Can I run an analysis to understand why this split happened? How?
Ans: Yes. This can be analyzed in VF02. Here is how:
- Input one of the two billing docs
- Go to Menu -> Environment -> Split Analysis
- Enter the second invoice number and click continue.
Q10: Can I also analyze a delivery split? How?
Ans: Yes. Head to VL10A
- Click on Collective Processing Logs
- Analyze these logs for your delivery splits.
Note: For the log to be saved, below two settings need to be maintained in advance:
- User Parameter to be set. [Transaction SU03]
- Field "Display Info" under Background Processing in Shipping Point Definition must be set/checked. [Transaction SPRO]
Bonus Question: I need to verify the revenue account determined in my billing document. Can I analyze this? How?
Ans: When you create a billing document, an accounting document is also created automatically based on the current accounting determination. Go to VF02, enter the billing document, and click on Account Determination to analyze this.
While these features are fairly simple, they are very powerful in practice and are really handy in day-to-day usage of the sales processes. And this is not all. There are many-many more useful and subtle features that can come into play while trying to improve the productivity of our business users. I will probably write a sequel to this post to capture a few more that I have known to be of much help to the business users. For now, I hope you enjoyed reading this post and that it enriched you in some way. I THANK YOU for your time to read this post and wish you the best!
