Well, since the last post was starting to get a bit long, I decided to break it into 2 pieces. If you are jumping into this in the middle, please go back to my previous post to learn about the usage & characteristics. Today we will continue talking about the DIP, this time we will talk about the sources and material determination.
In the IMG, you can find your way to this configuration using the path: Plant Maintenance and Customer Service --> Maintenance and Service Processing --> Basic Settings --> Quotation Creation and Billing for Service Orders --> Profiles for Quotation Creation, Billing, Results Analysis.
Last time, we were drilling into the quotation usage (but everything applies to both the quote or the billing).
Once you select the Sources, you'll end up with a drop down list. The idea behind this list is where will the data be extracted from. For example, when you deal with quotations, you will want to use the planned cost options. When you deal with billing, it will all depend on objective. Typically, you will want to use Actuals for billing. As always, consult your professional to help you decide where to get the information :smile:
Now, I did want to bring up a small point. There are actually additional sources that you can get by turning on enhancements. I believe it is within the A&D portion, you can find even more items, like Planned Costs - Line Items. To me, this should really be in the standard system. However, it isn't delivered like that, so you may want to experiment in a sand box and turn on some A&D enhancements to open up additional sources.
The Percentage will be the proposed amount you want to bill to the customer. So for example, if only want to bill 50% of planned costs, then you enter 50. Personally, I always default back to 100%, and then use SD discounting to drive to the actual amount to bill. In my opinion it makes the customer happier to see a higher value with a big discount.
In addition, you can also drive selection criteria based on your characteristics. This means that you can exclude certain items from even being picked up by entering them within the selection.
Now you can either enter a simple Set and create it on the fly, or my personal preference is to create a cost element group, for example using KAH1, and that gives me more flexibility. But, in general it's a preference thing. If you always want to bill everything, you can skip the selection criteria entirely.
The last piece is material determination. This is my personal favorite. It allows me to create more meaningful DIEN materials, and drive to the correct one based on whatever criteria I set.
In this example, I've defined 3 additional materials (remember, they have to exist within your configuration client). Each one can behave differently. For each material you again have settings you can influence.
Transfer Quantity/Costs - gives you the option of sending the costs only, quantity only or both to the sales order. For labor, I always send both.
Material Direct - This means that whatever material is entered, will be placed on the sales order. I use this flag for my components, since I typically want each material listed, because often the pricing is already maintained at a material level.
Individual - this allows you to have each material listed, and not summarized. By default, identical materials are summarized into a single line in the sales order.
Conversion quantity -If the indicator has been set, the quantity is converted to the sales unit from the material determination material. If the sales unit has not been maintained, the quantity is converted to the material base unit of measure. If the indicator has not been set, the dynamic item unit of measure is used as the target unit of measure in the sales document
Finally, the criteria is what determines the material to enter. This example shows the LABOR material, and I have defined a cost element group SM_LABOR. This holds all the cost elements that should select this material. If you selected more characteristics with the material determination check mark, you'd see more fields here.
I hope this gives you a good idea of the power of the DIP (Dynamic Item Processor), and what you can do with Resource Related Quoting/Billing.
If you're interested in great tips and tricks on SAP service management, variant configuration or production planning, check out my blog at: http://paperstreetenterprises.com/blog/ There is also a link to some SAP Easy Buttons 😃
Thanks for reading,
Mike CTO - JaveLLin Solutions, LLC
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