Material Determination In SD view

MATERIAL DETERMINATION
Material Determination uses cond tech to swap one material for another in a sales order, when
certain conditions apply. Substituting one product with another product is called material
determination. The product is only substituted during the specific period.
You can use material det if you want the system to automatically substitute, for e.g.:
-          Customer specific product numbers with your own material numbers.
-          International article numbers (EAN's) with your own material numbers.
-          Substituting discontinued materials with newer materials
-          Seasonal products.
SPRO- IMG- SD- Basic Functions- Material Determination-
-          Maintain prerequisites for material determination
-          Assign procedure to sales doc types: determination rule
-          Define substitute reasons: OVRQ
Create Condition Table: select 'Material Entered' from field catalog & save
Maintain Access Sequence: go to new entries, give 4-digit code with descp. Select the 4-digit
code and go to Accesses and fill access no, table, descp, requirement (blank). Select the line and
go to Fields and save.
Maintain Condition Type: go to new entries, give the same 4-digit code as given to acc seq.
Assign acc seq to cond type and mention valid from and valid to date.
Maintain Procedure: go to new entries, define 6-digit code with descp. Select the 6-digit code
and go to control data and assign cond type to the procedure.
Assign Procedure to Doc Type: assign sales doc type to the 6-digit procedure.
Define Substitution Reasons: go to new entries, define 4-digit code with descp. In substitution
reasons you will also find entry, warning, strategy & outcome.
-          Entry: check this field if you want the original material and not substitutes to be printed in
the output.
-          Warning: check this field & a warning message is displayed before material is substituted
-          Substitution Strategy: controls whether product selection should occur automatically in
the background or whether the alternative materials should be offered for selection in a dialog
box.
-          Outcome of substitution: controls whether the outcome of product selection should
replace the original entry or whether it should be recorded as a sub item of the original entry
Condition Records: VB11, enter original material, substitute material, substitution reason &
validity. For multiple items select product & click on 'Alternative Materials Button'.
o        Leave the warning & strategy indicators blank, or you will not be able to perform
automatic product selection based on ATP.
o        In outcome of Substitution, you must choose either A or B. Do not leave this field blank.
One of the most important decisions that you have to make about the product selection process
is whether or not substitutions determined in the order are to be redetermined in the delivery.
Outcome A Outcome B

Create as sub items Yes Yes

New Product Selection in Yes No

Delivery
Outcome A:
-          Product substitution re determined when copying them from sales order to del.
-          Rush order not supported
-          Main items & sub items must be carried through from the sales doc's, to the delivery, to
the billing doc.
-          If you use listing & exclusion in the sales doc process, the system does not take them in to
account while re determining substitutions in the delivery.
Outcome B:
-          The system does not re determine product substitution when copying them from sales
doc's to the deliveries. All items are copied directly.
-          Rush orders fully supported
-          Main items & sub items do not have to be carried through from the sales doc, to the
delivery, to the billing document

Welcome to our tutorial on SAP material determination, offered as part of our

free SAP SD training. SAP material determination allows a company to control its
products or finished materials. You can substitute one product for another one and
control the substitution using validity dates in condition records. In this tutorial you
will learn how to configure SAP material determination and see several examples.

To illustrate SAP material determination, let’s assume a company sells a product in

different packaging during certain periods of time. For example, they may use
promotional holiday packaging during the month of December. With material
determination properly set up at the time of order entry, the user enters the normal
material number and the system substitutes it with the promotional product ordered
by the customer. Depending on the type of SAP material determination configured,
the system may:

 Propose manual product selection from a list

 Automatically substitute the product

Configure SAP Material Determination

To configure material determination use the customizing path below in transaction

code SPRO:

Sales and Distribution – Basic Functions – Material Determination – Assign

Procedures To Sales Document Types

Assign the standard material determination procedure A00001 to the relevant sales

document types as shown below:
Assign Procedure to Sales Document Types

Hit Enter then Save   . The procedure assignment will be saved with a

confirmation message:  .

Next, define substitution reasons using the customizing path below in transaction
code SPRO:

Sales and Distribution – Basic Functions – Material Determination – Define

Substitution Reasons

There are standard predefined substitution reasons already available which can be
used, edited or deleted.
Define Substitution Reasons

To create new substitution reasons, press the New Entries button   . Enter

the following information:

1. Substitution reason code, starting with Z to indicate that it is a custom code

2. Description
3. Tick the Entry tickbox if you want the system to print the name or number of the original
material on order confirmation output
4. Tick the Warning tickbox if you want the system to display a warning message before
substituting a material
5. Enter A in the Strategy field to show a selection screen of substitute products when the
sales document is entered; Leave the Strategy field blank to allow the system to
automatically select the substitution
6. Enter A in the Outcome field to record the substitution product as a sub-item against the
original entry; Leave the Outcome field blank to allow SAP material determination to
replace the original entry

Define New Substitution Reasons

Hit Enter then Save   . The new reason codes will be saved with a confirmation

message: 

Execute SAP Material Determination

To illustrate an SAP material determination, first a master record of the substitution

materials for the relevant validity dates must be set up. Then, the sales order can be
created and the material substitution is carried out. We will walk through these steps
in the following sections.

Create Material Determination Master Data

Menu path Logistics > Sales and Distribution > Master Data > Products > Material Determination

Transaction code VB11 – Create

Enter material determination type A001 as shown below:

Create Material Determination Initial Screen

Press Enter to create the material determination master record. Enter the following
information:

1. Valid from as the beginning date of the substitution time period

2. Valid to as the end date of the substitution time period
3. Proposed reason created previously (Z000 in our example)
4. MatEntered field as the material that the user will enter and which will be replaced
5. Material field as the material that will substitute the entered material
Create Material Determination Master Record

Hit Enter then Save   . The material determination master record will be saved

with a confirmation message: 

Create Material Determination Sales Order

To create a sales order, execute transaction code VA01. Enter all the details for the
sales order, taking care to use one of the sales order types to which you assigned
the material determination procedure in the configuration step. The material
determination is triggered by the material number and the requested delivery date as
set up in the master record. In our example, we use 50065670 as our material
number with a requested delivery date of 29.12.2016 as shown below:

Create Sales Order

Once all data is entered, hit Enter to trigger the material determination. Since our
material’s substitution reason has substitution strategy A, the system displays a
dialog box to allow the user to select the alternative material from the list. Highlight
the desired substitute material and hit Enter to replace it:

Material Substitution Selection Screen

The entered material is now substituted through SAP material determination, as

shown below:
Material Substituted

Hit Enter then Save   to post the sales order.

Execute Material Determination with Alternative Configuration

We have just demonstrated SAP material determination with a substitution strategy

that allows a user to select the material from a list. Let’s assume that we have
instead configured a blank substitution strategy for our substitution reason as
indicated below (note that the Warning tickbox is selected for our substitution
reason):
Update Substitution Reason Configuration

Using a blank substitution strategy, the material is substituted automatically. Let’s

create a new sales order to see how this works. Execute transaction code VA01.
Enter all the details for the sales order. In our example, we use 50065670 as our
material number with a requested delivery date of 29.12.2016 as shown below:
Create Sales Order

Once all data is entered, hit Enter to trigger the material determination. Since our
material’s substitution reason has substitution strategy <blank>, the system does not
display the alternative material selection screen. Instead, the system prompts a
warning message before automatically substituting the material with the alternative
material. This is due to the fact that the Warning tickbox is selected in the
substitution reason customization.
Material Determination Warning Message

Hit Enter to proceed with the substitution. The material is substituted successfully as

shown below:

Material Substituted
Hit Enter then Save   to post the sales order.

Now let’s see what happens when we remove the warning indicator and update the
outcome in the material substitution reason configuration, as indicated below:

Update Substitution Reason Configuration

Using substitution outcome A, the system records the substitution product as a sub-
item against the original entry. The removal of the warning indicator will enable the
system to carry out this substitution automatically with no warning message. Let’s
create a new sales order to see how this works. Execute transaction code VA01.
Enter all the details for the sales order. In our example, we use 50065670 as our
material number with a requested delivery date of 29.12.2016 as shown below:
Create Sales Order

Once all data is entered, hit Enter to trigger the material determination. Since our
material’s substitution reason has substitution outcome A and the warning indicator
removed, the system retains the original material entered in the first line item and
automatically creates a subitem for the substitute material. There is no warning
message provided.

Subitem Created Automatically

Hit Enter then Save   to post the sales order.

Did you like this tutorial? Have any questions or comments? We would love to hear
your feedback in the comments section below. It’d be a big help for us, and hopefully
it’s something we can address for you in improvement of our free SAP SD tutorials.