How to create a standard order with freight costs and items that are no cost objects

[Former Member]

Dear Experts,

I've been searching SCN and googling but couldn't find answers.

This is a test step from an old test script that was for FICO experts who has advanced Logistics knowledge - it doesn't provide much details as to how to carry it out. I know it has touch points on SD, Material Master.

Here're some background info.

Scenario: sell from stock

T-Code: VA01

End Goal: create a standard order with freight costs and items that are no cost objects

I'm ok with running VA01 - please focus on suggestions on the red font part.

Here're some findings from my search, please feel free to fill in more details and or make other detailed suggestions.

1. SO with freight costs: I know I can manually add Pricing Condition HD00 (Freight). Is there any other more elegant / best practice suggestions?

2. items that are no cost objects: My SO item Account Assignment contains auto filled Profit Center (SAP-DUMMY), I found below that tells me the possibilities where cost object could be from, please feel free to provide better suggestions.

• SO item Account Assignment-Profit Center: I saw postings saying this is copied from Material Master, Sales: General/Plant. But the material I'm using doesn't have Profit Center data - actually, such field is grayed out and empty. So one of the questions is where does the SO item Account Assignment Profit Center data come from?

Thanks in advance.

[VeselinaPeykova · Accepted solution]

We estimate freight costs (as statistical conditions) in pre-sales activities for products, which are yet to be developed, so you have only a vague idea what you will produce and where and in what packaging it will be best to deliver it. We use business rules to determine the manufacturing locations and play with different combinations of possible quantities to be shipped in one delivery, then we apply freight costs based on agreements with freight forwarders and historical data for a specific family of products.

In some companies they might run shipment cost simulation in the order and try out different combinations (they are also inaccurate, but better than nothing) and get a rough estimate.

Most companies have agreements with FA, so it really depends on what are the terms in the agreement - if you only pay per kg and km and you assume that all will be delivered, you can calculate some expected freight in the order and maintain some condition records.

Entering freight in the sales order is a cheap solution, and the cheapest vanilla solution very often has some limitations, which the business considers acceptable.

If you really want to get a proper freight cost, you will pay for good a transportation optimizer, which plans also packaging proposal and use these results to communicate to freight forwarders (and optionally initiate bidding). You could then record the actual km+what was delivered - from a web portal, EDI or odometer readings+ DSD and use this as a basis to calculate freight. And you will most likely pay also for some additional features in shipment cost calculation.

Anyway, I am surprised that a person with a SAP logo asks for help on basic stuff in the forum, instead of discussing with his colleagues. Is there no one in this huge company that you feel comfortable speaking to, who can explain to you the business case and the purpose of this test? And why you are using old scripts - do they really apply to what needs to be done for this scenario? Does SAP not provide any internal trainings like TERP10 to help its employees understand the dependencies between modules?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks, Veselina. I'm not in FICO nor Logistics - just going thru the script for spare time. These Freight Cost explanation really put me into perspective. I'm sure others would appreciate them too. Keep up the sharing and contribution! Let's build a stronger community!

[VeselinaPeykova · Accepted solution]

Still, if you want to learn how things work things and finish the script - go and speak with your colleagues in FICO and Logistics, or request internal trainings. On top of that, they have access to your system and can take a look, which makes troubleshooting a lot easier. I hope that your colleagues don't consider the time of SCN members less valuable than theirs, especially when they can benefit in the future by helping a colleague learn cross-module topics.

One more thing: have you tried searching the site? I tried 'dummy profit center' in search.sap.com and got some useful discussions, one of which pointed to a help.sap.com page, that explains what is a dummy profit center, what is a default profit center and how you get them.

Going through a script, without understanding what result you need to achieve, does not help you learn.

I have no idea what the script purpose is exactly, but seeing a dummy profit center is usually not a good sign in a real-life scenario - I think, maintaining a profit center in material master is desirable in most cases.

As to the cost object assignment - most likely the script simply meant not to derive or assign internal orders or WBS elements.

Please don't treat SCN as a training facility and use this opportunity to get to know your colleagues better.

[Jelena]

+1 to all that Veselina said. Why are you not able to clarify the purpose of this step in the script? I wouldn't be able to do my job right if I didn't understand what I'm doing... It's perfectly reasonable to ask for a clarification in this case. 

I know I can manually add Pricing Condition HD00 (Freight). Is there any other more elegant / best practice suggestions?

But what exactly is not elegant enough about adding it manually? Again, without understanding the purpose it's difficult to suggest anything. What if the script is supposed to create some very specific postings at the end? How could we possibly know this?

If we tried to ask SAP Support such questions they'd direct us to the paid consulting service. But now when a free consultation is needed from the SCN members the "community card" is played. Very interesting...

[Lakshmipathi]

1. Ideally, freight cost will have to be added either in delivery or in billing due to the fact that you may not know the exact volume of shipment or the kilometers based on which only, normally, freight cost would be determined.
2. If the Profit Center is missing in material master, then check in OKB9

G. Lakshmipathi

[Former Member]

1. Thanks for the explanation on Freight Cost. I'm not able to clarify the intention of creating an SO with freight costs. But since it's an FICO script, I doubt it was aiming at going thru that length to make the Freight Cost determination that complex. I'd say I'll settle on adding Pricing Condition HD00 and moving on with the test.

2.1 Let me backup a little and clarify with you: if the script says creating an SO with item that has no cost object. What does it mean from SD point of view? i.e. what do I need to do to avoid SO item having cost object?

2.2 When trouble shooting why my SO item Account Assignment has PC SAP-DUMMY, I checked below settings:

• Material Master, Sales: General/Plant, Profit Center field is empty and grayed out - this is good for me since I don't want VA01 copy any PC data from there to my SO.
• OBK9, I see Profit Center (CC05, not SAP-DUMMY) is maintained for CoCd(CFP0) + Cost Elem. (800000). SO header, Accounting, field CCode toBeBilled (CFP0)
• 0KEM, 0KEL, there's no PCA rule for SO creation
• I'm digging more...