Benefits of referencing in SAP

[Former Member]

What is the advantage of referencing in an SAP system, such as creating a sales order and referencing it to the quotation?

[Lakshmipathi · Accepted solution]

Forget about SAP; from domain perspective, ask yourself the following questions so that you will get an answer as to why referencing a document is recommended

1. How many quotations have been converted into sale order? - This will help the sales team to arrive at some statistics
2. How many sale orders have been partially delivered ?  - Logistics team would investigate why the orders could not be fully delivered
3. How many deliveries are PGId but not invoiced? - This would enable the sales team to find out the tune of sales which has not been invoiced

So to get the realistic information / data by Business on above questions, unless, you refer a preceding document, it is not possible. 

G. Lakshmipathi

[Former Member]

I would like to add my flavor also..

Its a tightly integrated system so It reduces human interaction in data flow ( at some level ) so that there is much lesser change of error (data modification side).

[former_member182378]

Linda,

For this concept of referencing, look at text determination.

The text from source document is reflected in the text of destination document, further when the text is changed in the source document, the text is automatically changed in the destination document, because of functionality reference (in contrast with functionality copy)

TW

[Former Member]

Hi,

basicall,advantage is that data is copied from source (quotation) to destination (sales order) so no need to enter again same data.

Regards,

JM

[jobis]

Hi Linda,

Referencing helps in linking documents and, makes it easy to track the procedures (activities) related to.. say a customer sales, return etc.

Regards

Jobi

[former_member182378]

Jobi,

I like your post but referencing per se does not lead to linking documents, one needs to activate "update document flow" in copy control, at item category only then you can say referencing leads to linking documents (visible in doc flow)

TW

[jobis]

Hi TW,

Yeah you r correct. thanks for pointing it.

Certainly, these settings has to be done, to benefit from all the features and possibilities of referencing.

I have a doubt here as i have not tested it.., if we do not mark 'update doc flow' in copy control, still, the VBFA table will have the data of pre and following docs no..?

Regards

Jobi

[former_member182378]

Jobi,

If configuration update document flow is blank, then the entries will not be created in VBFA too!

This field should be activated, if you read the F1 help, system calculates how much qty in source document has been copied into target document, which means if this field is inactive, then the same qty from source document can be copied into target document multiple times - which is incorrect. So this field should be activated.

TW