SAP R/3 Sales and Distribution Module
The Sales and Distribution Module covers the business path of an order from initiation (and even pre-initiation), to order fulfillment. All the different processes of the order life-cycle are linked within SD and to relevant processes outside SD e.g., Financial Accounting and Material Management.
The characteristics of SD are:
- Mechanisms to execute the business processes used in the selling, shipping and billing of products and services.
- Tightly coupled data flow to the other SAP modules — Integration.
- Multilingual/Multicurrency: Several languages can be used. Conversion between currencies is automatic and connecting to SAP's real-time currency rate database in Germany enables operational use.
- Flexible and robust functionality that is tailored through configuration. R/3 allows you to customize the product to meet the specific requirements of your organization. This is done through the IMG (Implementation Guide) and other functions.
- Pricing Flexibility. In SD, you can create complex pricing schemes that are dependent on customers, goods sold, special promotions etc. Rebate processing options are also very sophisticated and comprehensive.
- Simple Order Entry. The user enters basic order details all on one window. From this window, there is simple access to all the levels of the order, namely header, item, and schedule line information.
- Comprehensive Reporting. The Sales Information System (SIS) allows data to be stored, consolidated, and reported upon by the user in a variety of formats.
- Flexible Batch Processing of Orders. Orders, deliveries,
shipments, invoices and other sales documents can be generated in batch
form, based on order types (e.g., incomplete orders) or customer, or material.
Processing of batched orders can also be made to run as background tasks
to balance processing load.
SAP Sales processing is based on the following basic structures:
- All company is structured in a certain way. In order to work with the SAP business software, your company structure has to be represented in the system. This is done with the help of various organizational structures.
- In SD, products are sold or sent to business partners or services are performed for them. Data about the products and services as well as about the business partners is the basis for sales processing. Sales processing with the SAP System requires that the master data has been stored in the system.
In addition to sales and distribution, other departments of the company such as accounting or materials management access the master data. The material master data is stored in a specific structure in order to allow access from these different views.
- The processing of business transactions in sales and distribution is based on the master data. In the SAP System, business transaction are stored in the form of documents. These sales and distribution documents are structured according to certain criteria so that all necessary information in the document is stored in a systematic way.
