Conditions are stipulations agreed with vendors regarding prices, discounts and surcharges and suchlike. The system determines the effective net purchase price in POs on the basis of these pricing elements. Conditions can be maintained when you enter or create quotations, info records, outline purchase agreements, and purchase orders. MM Purchasing differentiates between the following prices: Gross price: Price excluding any possible discounts or surcharges Net price: Price taking discounts, surcharges, and taxes into account Effective price: Net price less or plus delivery (incidental procurement) costs, cash discount, and miscellaneous provisions for accrued costs or rebates. Discounts or surcharges may be percentage-based, quantity-dependent, or absolute in nature. You can also enter conditions that do not take effect immediately, at the time of individual transactions, but subsequently thereto, and which require settlement at the end of a predefined period. In MM Purchasing, a distinction is made between conditions that are valid for a certain period (time-dependent conditions) and conditions for which no special validity period can be defined (time-independent conditions).

Up to Release 3.1, the term Master conditions was used in place of the term "time-dependent conditions", and the term Document conditions was used for "time-independent conditions".

Conditions in info records and contracts are always time-dependent. You can specify in Customizing (via the document type) whether time-dependent or time-independent conditions can be maintained in quotations and scheduling agreements. As of Release 4.0A, the standard settings are time-dependent conditions for both scheduling agreements and quotations. Conditions in purchase orders are always time-independent conditions.

Time-dependent conditions can be stored on either a plant-specific or a cross-plant basis (in the latter case, for all plants belonging to a purchasing organization). You can also use conditions negotiated by another purchasing organization (reference purchasing organization). In addition to time-dependent conditions that apply to individual info records, or quotation or outline agreement items, you can also define time-dependent conditions reflecting more general pricing arrangements (general conditions). Time-dependent conditions can be limited to a certain validity period. If a vendor's pricing varies according to the quantity purchased, you can enter it in the form of a price/quantity scale. You can specify upper and lower limits for time-dependent conditions in order to prevent agreed maximum or minimum figures from being exceeded in the event that condition values are changed manually in the purchase order. In the case of time-dependent conditions, no subtotals are formed (net price, effective price).

Valid time-dependent conditions from info records or outline purchase agreements are adopted as default values in purchase orders.

Item conditions are conditions relating to a single item of a document.

Header conditions are entered in the header of a document and relate to all the items of that document.

Some standard condition types can only be used as item conditions, some can only be used as header conditions, and others can be used as both header and item conditions. Usage options are determined by the Header condition/Item condition switch in Customizing for the condition type.

No automatic price determination process is carried out for header conditions. For this reason, you cannot assign an access sequence to a header condition (except if it is also defined as an item condition). Neither can you create condition records for such a condition.

A condition type can be defined as a group condition in Customizing. A group condition is a condition relating to several items of a document. In the case of a group condition, the condition values (price, order quantities, weight or volume) of the relevant items are added together and the resulting sum total used as the condition basis. This allows more favorable values to be taken as a basis for the scale computation than would be the case if individual items were considered. The grouping of item items is carried out using the key of the condition record for the group condition or by means of a group condition routine assigned to the condition type in Customizing.

The individual conditions are described by means of condition types. There are condition types for the gross price, various discounts and surcharges, freight charges, fixed costs, etc.

Condition types are defined together with their control parameters in Customizing.

Condition types are differentiated broadly via the condition class and more finely via the condition category.

The calculation rule stipulates how the system calculates the condition value. For example, a discount or surcharge can be a percentage of the gross price, a fixed amount, or a quantity-dependent amount.

The plus/minus sign determines whether a condition is treated as a negative or positive amount. Negative amounts are discounts (deductions), positive amounts are surcharges (additions).

The reference magnitude for scales also depends on the condition type. A scale can be based on quantity or dollar value, for example.

An access sequence may be assigned to a condition type. The access sequence is a search strategy by means of which you specify the order in which condition tables are to be searched for relevant entries for a condition type. In the standard system, no access sequences are assigned to the condition types for discounts and surcharges (RA00, RA01 etc.) because they do not have separate validity periods. They are always maintained at the same time as the gross price (PB00) and their validity period is always the same as the validity period of the gross price.

You can define your own condition types.

Conditions are stored in the system as condition records. Condition tables reference condition records. Condition tables enable you to vary the key structure of condition records. There are condition tables with the following key fields, for example: Vendor, material, purchasing organization, info record category Vendor, material, purchasing organization, plant, info record category Vendor, material, purchasing organization, info record category, order unit Purchasing document, item, plant Entries in condition tables consist of a key part and a data part. The data part contains the number of a condition record. Condition records are stored in the following transparent tables, for example: KONP (time-dependent conditions) KONH (header conditions) KONM (quantity scales) KONW (value scales)

The access sequence is a search strategy defining the order in which condition tables are searched for relevant entries for a condition type. The order of accesses is determined by the order of the condition tables in the access sequence.

A vendor's gross price for a material can depend on a variety of factors. There are different condition tables with different combinations of key fields for the various price-influencing factors, e.g.:

Table A068: for gross prices in plant-specific outline agreement items

Table A016: for gross prices in the items of centrally agreed contracts

Table A067: for order-unit-dependent gross prices in plant-specific material info records

Table A017: for gross prices in plant-specific material info records

Table A018: for gross prices in material info records

Table A025: for gross prices in plant-specific non-stock-material info records (info records without a material number).

As of Release 4.0A, it is possible to differentiate between gross prices, discounts and surcharges for different variants of a configurable material.

Requirement routines are used to determine the prerequisites according to which the system searches certain condition tables for relevant entries. Some condition tables are only accessed if the document item fulfills certain criteria.

In MM, the framework for determining the purchase or valuation price is the so-called "price calculation schema", which groups together all the condition types that are relevant to this process. (Note that in the SD area such calculation schemas may be referred to as "pricing procedures".) Among other things, the calculation schema defines the permissible condition types the condition types for which conditions are adopted automatically (Manu. indicator) the condition types for which the net price calculation is applied (Stat. indicator) the order in which the condition types are taken into account in the calculation of the net or effective price the condition types for which subtotals are calculated the requirements that must be satisfied before a certain condition type is taken into account In addition, the From reference step for percentage conditions is defined in the calculation schema. The From reference step can be combined with a To reference step.

When you create a purchase order, a contract release order, or a delivery schedule (under a scheduling agreement), the system searches existing info records and documents for valid conditions and adopts any it finds as default values in the new document.

The price determination process is carried out in a number of steps:

First the relevant calculation schema is determined

Then the system searches for condition records for all condition types listed in the calculation schema that have an access sequence assigned to them

The search for condition records is carried out in the order specified in the access sequence

The search is concluded when a valid condition record is found

Material-specific discounts and surcharges are supplementary conditions linked to the gross price (condition type PB00). No access sequence is assigned to a supplementary condition in Customizing for the condition type. No separate price determination is carried out for supplementary conditions. They are found via the condition record for the gross price.

A calculation schema for supplementary conditions must be assigned to condition type PB00 (or your own, comparable condition type for the gross price). In the standard system, schema RM0002 is used for this purpose.

Condition types of this calculation schema are discounts and surcharges (RA00, RA01 etc.), and freight conditions (FRA1, FRB1 etc.), which can be valid for specific materials.

The list of condition types suggested to you if you choose the Default condition supplement function when maintaining info record conditions or conditions for quotation or outline agreement items is based on the calculation schema for supplementary conditions.

The assignment facilitates the entry of discounts, surcharges etc. on the basis of the info record or quotation or outline agreement item.

Supplementary conditions have the same validity period as the main condition.

In the standard system, no access sequence is usually assigned to the condition types of the supplementary calculation schema because they do not have their own validity periods and are always maintained in conjunction with the gross price.

The structure of the calculation schema assigned to the standard purchase order should correspond to that of the calculation schema for supplementary conditions.

An info record can be created either manually, or automatically (via the info update indicator).If an info record is created manually, the gross price and supplementary conditions can be maintained for a certain validity period. It is also possible to enter scales and upper and lower limits.

If an info record is generated from a contract, the gross price and all supplementary conditions are adopted in the info record.

If an info record is created from a PO or scheduling agreement, the conditions are adopted not in the info record but in the order price history.

If info record conditions exist and are valid, they are suggested (i.e. appear as default values) when a new PO is created. The conditions from the order price history (i.e. the price and conditions of the last PO) are only used as default values if the system was unable to find any valid info record conditions.

In info record list displays, a distinction is made between info record conditions (headword "condition") and the conditions of the last PO (headword "purchase order").

If you create an info record manually or automatically, the gross price that is entered or adopted is assigned to condition type PB00.

When a PO is created without reference to a contract or quotation, a vendor's gross price for a material is adopted from the info record conditions (or, where appropriate, from the order price history) as the default value for condition type PB00.

If no valid info record conditions exist and no order price history could be found, the system is not able to suggest a price and requires the manual entry of a net price. The manually entered price is assigned to condition type PBXX.

Two condition types for the gross price must be available in the calculation schema that is assigned to the standard purchase order. In the standard system, these are the condition types PB00 and PBXX. An access sequence is assigned to condition type PB00, so that the price determination process can be carried out for this condition type. No access sequence is assigned to condition type PBXX. PB00 must be come before PBXX in the calculation schema.

At the time a purchase order is created, if the system finds a condition record belonging to condition type PB00 with valid conditions, condition type PBXX is irrelevant. This is determined via the calculation schema. In the latter, it is specified that PBXX is only to be taken into account if requirement 6 (in older SAP Releases: requirement 5) is fulfilled. Requirement 6 checks the condition exclusion indicator (KOMP-KZNEP). If the latter indicator has the value "X", requirement 6 is not fulfilled and condition type PBXX is skipped in the calculation schema. The condition exclusion indicator always has the value "X" if a condition record belonging to condition type PB00 is found, because the condition exclusion indicator "X" is always assigned to condition type PB00 in Customizing on principle.

You can also use your own, comparable condition types in place of condition types PB00 and PBXX.

SAP AGTAMM10 4.0B21-2