Material determination in sales and distribution

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© 2011 SAP AG 1
Material Determination in Sales
and Distribution
Applies to:
Material Determination in Sales and Distribution. For more information, visit the Enterprise Resource
Planning Homepage.
Summary
This document explains what is material determination in SAP sales and distribution.This configuration is
setup when business requires swapping of one material by the other material in a sales document.The
concept of material determination is also called as „Product Selection‟ i.e, Old product can be replaced by
new product as per the lauch date of the product.
Author: Priyadharshini Shanmugasundaram
Company: Applexus Technologies Pvt Ltd
Created on: 19 May, 2011
Author Bio
Priyadharshini Shanmugasundaram is currently working as SAP TechnoFunctional Consultant in
Applexus Technologies Pvt Ltd.

Material Determination in Sales and Distribution
© 2011 SAP AG 2
Table of Contents
Material Determination........................................................................................................................................3
Purpose of Substitution Strategy ........................................................................................................................3
Configuration for Material Determination:...........................................................................................................4
Step 1: Maintain Field Catelog........................................................................................................................5
Step 2: Click on “Display Condition tables”.....................................................................................................5
Step 3: Maintain Access Sequences ..............................................................................................................6
Step 4: Maintain procedure.............................................................................................................................7
Related Content................................................................................................................................................12
Disclaimer and Liability Notice..........................................................................................................................13

© 2011 SAP AG 3
Material Determination
Substituting one product with another product is called material determination.The product is only substituted
during the specific period.
Eg : If material MT001 is ordered and is not available to purchase due to some reasons(could be out of stock
or is not moving or due to competition),with material determination the system automatically substitutes it with
MT002.
Both items MT001 and MT002 have same price and same features except the shape (which is an added
feature in material MT002).
Material Determination uses condition technique to swap one material for another in sales order, when
certain conditions apply. Using material determination concept, you can automatically substitute the following:
 Customer specific product numbers with your own material numbers.
 International Article numbers (EAN‟s) with your own material numbers.
 Seasonal products (Special gift-wrapping of a material for a festive season).
 Substituting discontinued materials with newer materials.
Mainly the Material determination procedure is based on the sales document type. Using condition technique,
the criteria can be defined and condition records can be maintained.
Standard material determination procedure for order type OR is A0001.
Standard material determination condition type is A001.
Swapping the product can be based on certain business conditions. These are called substitution
reasons.For each substitution reason,you can define a substitution strategy.
Purpose of Substitution Strategy
 System will automatically replace product as per material determination record after carrying out
availability check or can give list of substitute products for users to check and select or replace
material without availability check.
 This strategy also controls whether both substituted and substitute materials is to be displayed in the
sales order or only substitute materials is to be displayed.
 It also controls display of substituted or substitute materials on output types like order confirmations.
 In delivery, no material determination is carried out for items copied from the order.
Material Determination
Material entered Substitute
Material
MT001
MT002
Sales Order
Item
Material
10
MT001
MT002

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Configuration for Material Determination:
Path : SPRO -> Sales and Distribution -> Basic Functions -> Material Determination -> Maintain
 Prerequisites for Material Determination
Following screen appears :

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Step 1: Maintain Field Catelog
We can also access this screen using the transaction OV26.
Field Catelog contains fields used by the system to determine substitution materials in the Material
determination procedure. Click on Maintain Field Catelog.The following screen appears.
Click on backspace and come to the main screen.
Step 2: Click on “Display Condition tables”

© 2011 SAP AG 6
Select 001 (Material Entered) and click enter.The fields in the condition table 001 appears.
Step 3: Maintain Access Sequences

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Access sequence is used to obtain the condition record.
Select A001 and click on accesses.
Here, you can notice that the access sequence contains the condition table 001.The first field „No‟ is the
access number in which the system will read the accesses.
Now select the record and click on fields.Here,you can see the fields contained in the condition record.
Step 4: Maintain procedure

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Click on the procedure „A0001‟ and click on control data.
Here, you can see that the procedure contains the condition type „A001‟.
 Assign Procedures to Sales Document Type
In this step we would assign the procedure A0001 to our sales document type.

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 Maintain Substitution Reasons
You can also access this screen using the transaction OVRQ.
In this screen you can maintain the substitution reasons.
Maintaining Materials for Substitution
Goto transaction VB11 or follow the navigation bath.
Path : SAP Menu -> Logistics -> Sales and Distribution -> Master Data -> Products -> Material
Determination -> create

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Maintain the substitution material information and click on save.
Now test the configuration by creating a sales order.

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Now if you press on enter,instead of material 1803, 1804 will appear and ordered due to material
determination configuration.
Hope the concept of Material Determination in SAP Sales and Distribution is clearly understood.

© 2011 SAP AG 12
Related Content
SAP Help Portal
SAP Documentation
For more information, visit the Enterprise Resource Planning Homepage.

© 2011 SAP AG 13
Disclaimer and Liability Notice
This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not
supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade.
SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document,
and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk.
SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or code
sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and services
offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this document.

Material determination in sales and distribution

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