Vendor consignment stock vs Customer consignment stock process?

Hi.

I should probably have been able to find some logical answer to this.

I'm just learning about the vendor consignment process, and understand that doing a settlement run in MRKO will schedule a payment to the vendor in question based on transfers to own stock in a period. While this is fine and dandy, I'm also familiar with the customer consignment process, and it kind of feels strange.

As an end user in SAP previously, we normally had a recap with the customer so that we created a KE order towards the customer consignment stock, issued and invoiced.

Suppose the vendor is also running SAP, they will have stock type W towards us when we procure from them. But if we just settle with MRKO and pay the vendor, they will just receive the payment with some reference, I guess with some details on materials etc.

So, is it then expected of the vendor to create a KE order based on our payment (using our payment as a reference), to consume their W stock? But since it's already paid, the invoice that KE triggers would then cross the payment we've made. Shouldn't standard KE then be a "cash order" type (not triggering an invoice) instead?

With the MRKO process, we are just accepting the info record conditions, it just seems like a weird process to pay before we get an invoice.. Shouldn't the output of the MRKO be sent to the vendor as the recap of materials and quantities consumed in the agreed period and wait for the vendors invoice??

I might be looking at this from the wrong angle, but it just doesn't seem like a match of the sales vs procurement process.

Any comments on why it's set up like that would be appreciated :)

Best regards,

Vegard