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
- SD Third-Party Sales Part 1: How Third-Party (Drop-Ship) Sales WorkThird-party sales let a vendor ship directly to your customer: sales order item TAS, automatic purchase requisition and purchase order, vendor delivery, vendor invoice and customer invoice — no stock, no own delivery — and how it differs from the individual purchase order process.
- SD Third-Party Sales Part 2: Configuring Item Category, Schedule Line and Requisition DeterminationConfigure third-party sales: item category group BANS on the material, item category TAS (billing relevance F), schedule line category CS with purchasing data (order type NB, item category 5, account assignment 1), automatic PR creation and conversion to PO with source determination.
- SD Third-Party Sales Part 3: MM Integration, Invoice Verification and BillingClose the third-party loop: PO with account assignment to the sales order, optional statistical goods receipt, vendor invoice verification (MIRO) updating the invoice receipt quantity, customer billing based on that quantity via copy control, cost and margin postings, and handling partial shipments and price differences.
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?
- Suppose you inherit an existing Third-Party Sales solution. How would you review it before making a change?
- A distribution company sells specialized lab equipment that suppliers ship directly to customers. Explain how you would implement it in SAP.
- Customers are billed for third-party items the vendor has not yet shipped. How do you align billing with actual shipments?
- Third-party orders are created but PRs are missing or never become POs. How do you analyse the configuration?