Steps in FMS Order to Cash scenario
This blog talks about the steps involved in Order to Cash scenario in Fashion Management Solution. FMS is a industry specific solution which has the capabilities to cater to both Wholesale and Retail businesses. AFS(Apparel and Footware Solution, which is a predecessor of FMS ) customers can migrate to FMS using some migration tools like DTMT. FMS solution is available from EHP7, SAP_APPL 617. FMS business functions needs to be activated for FMS add-on to be active.
Briefly, the steps in simplified O2C of FMS from SD(Sales and Distribution) side can be summarized as
- Order Creation(Txn :- VA01)
- Allocation Run(ARun, Txn :- ARUN)
- Outbound Delivery Creation(OBD, Txn:- VL01N)
- Post Goods Issue(PGI, Txn :- VL01N or VL02N)
- Billing Document Creation (Txn:- VF01)
Let's take a deep dive into each of these steps and understand certain important aspects/key information that one must be sure is updated to proceed to the next step.
1. Order Creation
Transaction VA01 is used to create sales orders in FMS. To create a sales order it is important that all the relevant master data information like Order type, Sales area, Article Master, Customer Master etc. is already maintained in the system. Assuming that all the relevant master data is already maintained, we get into creating the sales order
Provide all the relevant information at the Order Type and Sales area input fields and click on enter. In the following screen provide values in Sold-to and Ship-to, provide a customer PO number, relevant payment terms information(this can be automated by maintaining customer master data).
Provide the Generic/Variant article, and the moment you click on enter you will be redirected to Quantity/ATP Overview screen.
Here you can see that ATP overview screen brings up all the valid Variant articles of the previously provided Generic article in Sales tab. This screen also shows the current stock situation in system against each Variant article (both batch and future stocks). Enter the variant quantities and click on back button.
When you come back to the Sales tab, you can notice that for those variant articles for which you entered quantity in the ATP overview screen, will be listed under that particular Generic article. Now make sure that your variants articles have confirmation quantity and with respect to Fashion make sure the allocation status is updated properly and you can check this at both header and at each individual item level.
The allocation status has to be "Not yet processed" as we have not yet executed allocation on this sales order yet. Save the sales order. This completes the first step in O2C.
2. Allocation Run
Allocation Run which is abbreviated as ARun, is an important step FMS for ARUN relevant articles. Without executing ARun you will not be able to proceed further for the delivery creation step. ATP normally does the soft allocation of stock to the demand and ARun makes a hard allocation of that stock to the respective demand, which would mean that after ARun, the confirmation qty on the requirements cannot be changed by the Re-ATP transaction. "ARUN" is the transaction that is used to perform allocation of the requirements. There are different flavors to ARun(for FMS on HANA)
Online ARUN (txn :- ARUN)
Arun Workbench (txn :- ARUNWB)
Parallel Arun (txn :- ARUNP)
Arun ITA (txn :- FSH_ARUNITA)
In this example we will consider the simplest form of allocation and that is Online Arun. Goto transaction ARUN
The screen shown in the above snap shot is the initial landing page when ARUN transaction is executed. In this selection screen you have lot of options to maintain different settings and affect the behavior of ARUN. All those detailed explanation is probably for another write up.
In this screen, first select the required Arun type. This ARUN type can be maintained in IMG and the path for that is SPRO→Logistics-General→SAP Fashion Management→Order Allocation Run(Arun)→Online Arun→Maintain ARun Types. Here you maintain all the required criteria for Stock selection, sorting rules for both requirements and stock, Allocation rules, Logging rules, Grouping, Release rules etc. So, when an Arun type is selected in the ARUN transaction all these criteria will be considered by ARUN for allocation.
After selecting an ARUN type, click on F8 button
The next screen gives you many options to control the selection of requirements and stock. These tabs are pretty much self explanatory and for this simple example I will use the "Plant" field under the "Material" tab and the "Sales Document" field under "Requirement(Sales 1)" tab. After providing these information click on F8 button
This is the resultant screen of ARUN execution. Allocation results are not yet stored, it will only be stored only when you click on "Save" button. Some important fields to notice in the resultant screen
- Requirement Quantity :- This field always refers to Confirmation Quantity and not the actual requirement quantity of the sales order.
- Allocated Quantity :- Quantity that has been allocated.
- Unallocated Quantity :- Due to deficit of stock sometimes ARUN will not be able to allocate the full requirement quantity. Suppose 10 is requirement and there is only stock for 7, then the unallocated quantity will be 3.
There are many other important fields, however this information is enough to an initial understanding of allocation run. On save of the allocation results it will be stored in allocation table(FSH_BDBS). The allocation status in the sales order will also be changed now.
The allocation status in the sales order has changed to "Completely Processed" because we were able to allocate the entire demand. Also it would be interesting to check the allocation table's(FSH_BDBS) contents.
One of the important thing to notice in this table is the "ARun Status" field. Currently it is "F" which means "Fixed", but this can have other statuses like
- "R" ;- Reserved - An allocation will get this status when you allocate the requirement against a future stock(Like a Purchase order, Shipping notification etc). Also you can customize this in the release rules customization to decide when you need this status based on allocation percentage.
- "H" :- Hold - This can also be customized on when you want this status based on the percentage of allocation in release rule customizing. With this status the requirement will be on hold and you cannot deliver it.
- "D" :- On Delivery :- Allocations take up this status when a delivery document is created for the allocated requirement. For creating delivery document the requirement in the allocations table should be in "F" status.
- "F" :- Fixed :- During allocation, if the ARun finds that there is physical stock in the warehouse then the allocation will result in "F" status. Even this status I customizable using the release rule settings.
You can also take a note of the "Allocated Qty" field which shows how much quantity has been allocated for that particular item. Also field "Stock Type" gives the information on what kind of stock has been considered by the allocation run to allocate.
The next would be to create a delivery document for this.
- Outbound Delivery Creation
This is similar to standard delivery creation. Use VL01N transaction(or any other transactions used to create delivery for SO's) and provide the SO number that you have created in the previous steps to create the delivery document
For the amount of quantity that you allocated with "F" allocation status for so much quantity you can create the delivery document. On save of this delivery document the allocation status in the FSH_BDBS table will change from "F" to "D". Batch management is also supported for batch managed articles.
You can notice that right after creation of delivery document the allocation status changed from F to D. This means that now you can perform Goods Issue for quantities that are in D status. So goto VL02N transaction and perform the PGI, which would be out next step in O2C.
- Post Goods Issue
Goto VL02N transaction and perform the PGI
Provide quantities under the picking tab and click on the "Post Goods Issue" button. The allocation table will be cleared of all the records of allocation for the items for which you perform PGI.
As you can see the allocation table FSH_BDBS is cleared of all allocations. The final step is to create billing document.
- Billing Document
To create billing document use transaction VF01. Provide the delivery document that you created it the previous step and click on enter
Click on save button and the billing document will be created.
This is the end of O2C cycle from SD perspective in FMS. This document helps you in getting an initial idea of the concept of Allocation Run(ARun) and also various pointers to look out for when creating a sales order in fashion world.
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