Third-Party Sales
Third-Party Sales in SD covers the process where a sales order line is fulfilled by an external vendor shipping directly to the customer instead of company stock. This topic explains the business rationale, item category and schema determination, purchase requisition/order integration with MM, billing-relevant copy control from vendor invoice, document flow across SD-MM-FI, common configuration pitfalls, troubleshooting of stuck requisitions or billing blocks, and differences in behavior and monitoring between ECC and S/4HANA deployments.
Overview
Third-Party Sales in SD covers the process where a sales order line is fulfilled by an external vendor shipping directly to the customer instead of company stock. This topic explains the business rationale, item category and schema determination, purchase requisition/order integration with MM, billing-relevant copy control from vendor invoice, document flow across SD-MM-FI, common configuration pitfalls, troubleshooting of stuck requisitions or billing blocks, and differences in behavior and monitoring between ECC and S/4HANA deployments.
Lessons in this topic
- Third-Party Sales: MM Integration, Invoice Verification, and Copy Control for BillingUnderstand how a third-party sales order triggers purchasing and how vendor invoice verification in MM flows back to control customer billing quantities and timing in SD.
- Third-Party Sales Fundamentals: Business Purpose and Process FlowIntroduces why companies use third-party sales, how it differs from standard and individual purchase order processing, and walks through the end-to-end document flow from sales order to customer invoice.
- Configuring Third-Party Sales: Item Category, Schedule Line, and Requisition DeterminationExplains the configuration mechanics behind third-party sales including item category determination, schedule line category control settings, purchase requisition item category linkage, and account assignment category in the resulting purchase order.
Interview questions covered
- In a third-party sales scenario, purchase requisitions are generated correctly from item category TAS orders, but the vendor invoice cannot be settled and billing is blocked. How would you diagnose and resolve this?
- A customer orders a mix of stocked and non-stocked items in a single sales order; the non-stocked items must be procured directly from a vendor and shipped to the customer without warehouse involvement. How does item category determination handle this within the same order, and what MM integration steps follow?
- An individual purchase order (IPO) scenario is failing: the sales order line for a special customer-specific material is not generating the expected purchase requisition, even though the item category shown is TAS-like and requisitions work fine for other third-party items. How would you diagnose and resolve this?
- How does schedule line determination differ for an Individual Purchase Order (IPO) scenario compared to standard third-party processing, and what configuration drives creation of the purchase requisition?