Can certain Purchasing org's be excluded from participating on central Outline agreements

Good Day Sap Family,

Our client has a project to have Contract management in place for Central agreements at a Group Procurement level & at Divisional level as well.

They used to have one purchasing organisation for their whole client i.e. C001. They also have within their client a few Joint venture companies that uses the purchasing group C001 as well.

The project design was to be as follows:

• Create a few purchasing groups dividing the different divisions with their own company codes & plant assigned to each individual purchasing organisation.
• They also required one purchasing organisation to be used at a group procurement level which meant that a contract created at that level will be valid for all divisions underneath it. That purchasing organisation is “PF00”

PF00 – Group procurement (Procurement for the whole client within the “PF” structure and excluding C001 purchasing organisation “Joint Ventures”)

PF01 – DIVISIONAL (multiple company codes and plants)

PF02 – DIVISIONAL (multiple company codes and plants)

PF03 – DIVISIONAL (multiple company codes and plants)

PF04 – DIVISIONAL (multiple company codes and plants)

C001 – JOINT VENTURES (Is to be excluded from the structure mentioned above and should not be affected by contract management with their own company codes & plants within it)

Customizing:

• New purchasing organisations were created as seen above
• Plants were extended to each specific purchasing groups
• Vendors were extended to each specific purchasing group
• Enforced contract customizing created on ME21N for message “06 587 A centrally agreed contract exists for this material”(we customized it to an Error)

GO – LIVE:

When we went live with the project design, a problem arose when a particular “Joint Venture” wanted to create a purchase order for a particular material that was linked to centrally agreed contract and the PO forced and error stating that there is a centrally agreed contract for this material and it would force them to then use that contract.

This was and is not acceptable for the Joint Ventures.

Initially this was not part of their scope (our clients scope) and we then had to change the message category to a “W”(Warning) from an “E”(Error) and the Joint Venture belonging to C001 can now procure materials they need even if there is a contract with a specific vendor for it.

In essence we have provided a current work around for the client, in order for their Joint Ventures not to be affected with the whole design but we need to enforce contract management still.

Advice:

What can you advise us on to have centrally agreed contracts maintained at purchasing organisation level but allow us to procure the same materials linked to a contract for a different vendor.

Are there customizing settings on outline agreements that we can configure to have materials procured that are linked to a contract/outline agreement, which will force everyone/divisions linked to the “PF” structure to use contract vendors and then exclude Joint ventures “C001” NOT to use contract vendors for the same materials?

1. NB. On the PF contract management, the procurement works as it should as per the project design to force business to procure against an outline agreement. Only issue is the Joint Ventures to not be affected by outline agreements.

Your urgent assistance and advice is highly appreciated.

Regards,

James Block

Message was edited by: Juergen L