5.4 Working with Condition Records: Maintenance Tools, Price Lists, Pricing Reports, and Manage Prices

Working with Condition Records: Maintenance Tools, Price Lists, Pricing Reports, and Manage Prices

Condition records are the master data of pricing: prices, discounts, surcharges, freight, and taxes. Sections 5.1 to 5.3 explained how the condition technique finds them. This section covers the S46200 unit Working with Condition Records: how records are stored, which tools maintain them efficiently, and how prices are reported to customers and colleagues. In the system-based assessment, maintaining or changing condition records is a typical way to make a configured pricing procedure produce the expected result.

How Condition Records Are Stored

The official course appendix summarizes the data model:

Pricing results in documents are a separate matter. In classic ERP they were stored in KONV; in SAP S/4HANA, the pricing elements of sales and billing documents are stored in PRCD_ELEMENTS (with header and item tables PRCD_HEAD and PRCD_ITEM).

Maintenance Tools

Single-Record Maintenance

VK11, VK12, and VK13 create, change, and display records for one condition type and key combination (section 5.1). The course points out that you can choose a calculation type in the condition record that differs from the one set in Customizing for the condition type, for example a fixed amount instead of a percentage for one special agreement.

Maintenance by Characteristics

An additional maintenance interface supports mass maintenance based on characteristics, such as a customer. You can display and maintain the material prices and the discounts and surcharges of one customer in a single step, across condition types and condition tables. The classic access by condition type remains available (node Select Using Condition Type).

Create with Template (VK14)

New condition records can be created with reference to existing records. You can change the rate, the validity period, and other sales data in the new records, which makes it efficient to roll out, for example, next year's prices.

Price Change and Copying Rules

The price change function maintains several condition records at the same time, for example a 3% increase for a group of records. Change documents let you review who changed what. You can also create many records by copying one record with a copying rule: for a customer-specific price, the system can create the target records for a range of customer numbers or for a range of material numbers. Copying rules are maintained in Customizing, and you can define your own.

Release Procedure

Condition records can go through a release procedure with a processing status, so that new prices are used only after approval. For individual processing logic, SAP provides Business Transaction Event 00503303 (Maintain Conditions: Transfers).

Price Lists

A price list report shows the prices that apply to customers and materials. Its selection screen offers:

• Organizational data: the sales area (sales organization, distribution channel, division).
• Customers: one or more sold-to parties or a range.
• Products: materials, product hierarchies, or material pricing groups.
• Control data: the pricing date and a sales document type. The document type is mandatory, because the system needs it to determine a pricing procedure for the price calculation.

The output can be displayed in the system (using a layout), uploaded to an FTP server, or emailed to the sold-to parties as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or character-separated files, also as ZIP files. Customizing for price lists changes the fields in the report, and enhancement spot implementations can add selection criteria.

Pricing Reports

Pricing reports answer analytical questions about the condition records in the system, for example:

• Which customer-specific price agreements were made within a certain period?
• Which Incoterms condition records exist?
• Which price lists were created with scale prices?

In Customizing, you create a pricing report by choosing the fields that define the view. The system then lists all condition tables that contain at least one of these fields, and you select the tables to include. Finally, you design the layout by positioning and sorting the fields in three report sections: the page header (with a page break when a value changes), the group header (a new heading for each table), and the items (the detailed record information). The course notes that condition maintenance through the area menu transactions VK31 to VK33 has become less important since the Manage Prices - Sales app was introduced.

The Manage Prices - Sales App

With Manage Prices - Sales, a pricing specialist manages all relevant condition records in one place:

• Dynamic filters: specify condition types and a key combination, and the app adds the relevant key fields as filters automatically. With several condition types, it shows the key fields of all of them.
• Create in the table: choose condition type and key combination; the key fields appear as columns.
• Copy existing records to create new ones.
• Mass change: edit the validity period and condition amount of several records at once.
• Spreadsheet import: download a template pre-filled with the key combinations of the filtered condition types, enter new records, and import it. To update records, export them, change the editable fields, and import the file again; new records can be added in the same file.
• Import history and background imports: check details of past imports, track large imports running in the background, and download errors to correct them.

Maintaining Descriptions for Condition Records

Instead of creating a new condition type for every promotional discount, you can give an individual description to each condition record. It overrules the default description of the condition type, so one condition type can appear with different texts. This simplifies pricing configuration and reduces the number of condition types. Descriptions are maintained in Manage Prices - Sales, in Set Material Prices - Sales, or in VK12.

Promotions and Sales Deals

The appendix of the pricing course describes a way to organize special prices for marketing campaigns:

• A promotion is a high-level marketing plan for products or product lines over a period, for example a summer sales promotion.
• A promotion contains sales deals, for example one per product line, each with its own focus such as customer-specific or material-based discounts.
• Condition records are created for a sales deal or assigned to it. If the sales deal belongs to a promotion, the records also carry the promotion number, so all records of a promotion can be listed and analyzed. The billing item shows the sales deal and promotion numbers.

The release status of a sales deal controls where its records are used:

Worked Example: Next Year's Price Increase

A pricing specialist must raise all list prices (PR00, key Material) of product group A by 4% from 1 January and send the new price list to key customers.

1. In Manage Prices - Sales, filter condition type PR00, key combination Material, and the materials of group A.
2. Export the records, enter the new amounts with valid-from 1 January in the spreadsheet, and import them. Because the new validity starts in the future, the current records are shortened to 31 December rather than replaced.
3. Give the records of a special introductory price the description "Launch price 2027" instead of creating a new condition type.
4. Run the price list for the key customers with the pricing date 1 January and the standard order type, and email it as a spreadsheet.