A sales transaction involves various stages like
presales, order, delivery, picking and packing, shipping, and billing. At each
stage, various documents are generated specific to that stage. They might be
required for legal or commercial reasons, or act as a stage completion
milestone.
For example, an order acknowledgment that confirms the
seller’s acceptance of the order marks the completion of the order stage, and
an invoice sent by the seller to the buyer is a confirmation of the completion
of the sales transaction and so on. These documents often have different
formats, and can be communicated in various forms such as printed copies, EDI,
email, fax, etc.
In SAP SD, all these documents are called outputs, and
their processing is controlled using the output determination technique
provided by SAP. Order acknowledgment, delivery note, pick/pack
list, shipping order, invoice, etc are examples of output documents.
Output determination sets up the output control, which is needed
to provide information to various stakeholders. It involves two functions:
- Output Determination
- Output Processing
The Condition Technique functionality is used to determine the
output. The system can automatically propose the output for a Sales and
Distribution document, or it can be manually chosen as well.
Output determination can be defined at various stages of the sales
cycle:
- Sales activities
- Sales documents
- Logistics execution related
- Billing related
In
this section we’ll describe how to setup/view the Output Determination process
for
- Sales documents
- Delivery documents
- Invoice
Sales Document
Open the sales document in edit mode (VA02).
Goto Extras àOutput à Header à
Print Preview. We can see a preview of the sales document, if the ouput
determination configuration has been done correctly. We can chose to print the
order by going to menu, Text à Print.
Delivery
Document
In transaction VL02N, enter the delivery number
for which output is to be viewed. Donot open the document, but in the same
screen go to Outbound Delivery à Issue Delivery Output.
Output type is LD00, corresponding to the delivery. Using the Preview button,
the output of the delivery can be seen, and it can be printed by issuing the
Print butotn command.
Invoice
In transaction VF02, enter the invoice number
for which output is to be viewed. Donot open the document, but in the same
screen go to Billing Document à Issue Output To.
Output type is RD00, corresponding to the invoice. Using the Preview button,
the output of the invoice can be seen, and it can be printed by issuing the
Print button command.
