7.6 Inbound Deliveries with EWM and Special Functions in Deliveries

Inbound Deliveries with EWM and Special Functions in Deliveries

The last part of the S46100 course looks beyond outbound sales deliveries: how goods are received with inbound deliveries in an EWM warehouse, and which special functions deliveries offer, such as pricing, the delivery interface, and incompletion control. These functions often explain why a delivery shows freight costs, sends an IDoc to a logistics partner, or cannot be picked.

The Purchasing Side in Brief

Materials procured from external suppliers have a purchasing view in their master data. Suppliers are business partners with address data, accounting data, and default values for purchase order processing, such as delivery conditions. If a material is regularly procured from a supplier with fixed conditions (price, quantities, delivery times), a purchasing information record for the material-supplier combination supplies these values when purchasing documents are created.

Goods Receipt with Inbound Deliveries in EWM

For a goods receipt in an EWM-managed warehouse, an inbound delivery referencing the purchase order (or manufacturing order) is required. There are several ways to create it, depending on the physical process and the information the supplier sends. The inbound delivery is the basis for the physical movements in the warehouse and for the goods receipt posting.

As with outbound processing, there are two documents: the LE inbound delivery in SAP S/4HANA and the EWM inbound delivery. In the course system, goods are first received into storage location 101D (EWM Received on Dock) and become available for sale in 101S (EWM Available for Sale) only after putaway in the final storage type. The course stresses that this two-location setup is not required to work with EWM, but SAP's standard scenarios are based on it.

Creating Inbound Deliveries Directly in EWM

Creating the inbound delivery directly in EWM simplifies warehouse processes, for example when the supplier does not send the information needed to create LE inbound deliveries automatically, such as advanced shipping notifications. When the goods physically arrive, the EWM inbound delivery is needed for putaway. EWM offers a classic transaction and an app with a simple interface to create the delivery, post the goods receipt, and create the warehouse task.

Customizing Inbound Deliveries

The controlling unit of the S46100 course explains the settings behind inbound deliveries:

• The purchase order items must contain a confirmation control key. In Customizing, the key refers to a confirmation sequence that contains a confirmation category, and the confirmation category is assigned to the delivery type used for the inbound delivery. For this delivery type, the preceding document must be a purchase order.
• The delivery type also has a default order type, because the system uses the copying control order type → delivery type to transfer information from the purchase order to the delivery (with a data transfer routine).
• Delivery item category determination finds the item categories from the delivery type, the general item category group of the material (client level), and usage V (purchase order), for example ELN.
• A corresponding order item category must exist so that the system can build the copying relationship at item level.
• The movement type is maintained in the delivery item category itself, because inbound delivery item categories such as ELN have SD document category 7 (inbound delivery/shipping notification). For all other item categories, the movement type comes from the schedule line category.

Special Functions in Deliveries

Pricing in Deliveries

An outbound delivery can contain shipping-related conditions, such as shipping or freight costs. Their values are entered manually or determined with the SD pricing condition technique. The rules from the course:

• The conditions can be printed on the delivery note and transferred to the billing document.
• They cannot be transferred from preceding documents (such as the sales order) to the outbound delivery.
• To implement them, use the standard pricing Customizing (condition type definition, pricing procedure) and assign the pricing procedure to the delivery type.

The Delivery Interface

If business partners take part in shipping, or if non-SAP systems perform some functions, information must be exchanged. External communication normally uses EDI messages; internal communication uses ALE messages. The delivery interface groups all EDI and ALE messages that refer to the delivery. They are all based on IDoc DELVRY07, the data structure of segments with the delivery fields and other shipping-relevant fields such as the route and batch characteristics. Output control at delivery header level triggers the filling of the IDoc, and the standard system provides message types for the communication scenarios.

Incompletion Control in Deliveries

When you call the log of incomplete items, the system checks whether the delivery data is complete, and you can branch directly to the screens for maintaining the missing fields. You can call the log from delivery processing or select incomplete deliveries with a special report, which creates a worklist. Key points:

• The check covers header and item level.
• Customizing controls which fields make a delivery incomplete and what effect the gaps have on follow-on activities such as picking, packing, goods issue, and billing, for example packing may not be allowed if the item volume is missing.
• The fields that cause incompleteness depend on the delivery type and the delivery item category.
• Partner functions and texts can also be set as required; if a required partner or text is missing, a note is entered in the log.

Further Functions

Many other functions run automatically or on request during delivery creation and processing, depending on the materials and Customizing, for example batch determination and texts.

Worked Example: Freight Costs on the Delivery

A company charges freight per delivery based on the actual weight, which is known only after packing.

1. A freight condition type and a delivery pricing procedure are configured, and the procedure is assigned to delivery type LF.
2. After packing, the delivery determines the freight condition from its gross weight. The freight is printed on the delivery note.
3. When the invoice is created with reference to the delivery, copying control transfers the freight condition from the delivery to the billing document, while the item prices still come from the sales order.
4. An IDoc based on DELVRY07 is sent to the logistics service provider through header output, and the incompletion log confirms that the required carrier partner is present before goods issue.