SAP Mental Notes

SAP MM, SD, PP Tips & Tricks

Source list benefits

A good way of tightening authorization in your procurement
organization is using mandatory source lists. In a previous post I
explained how you can use source list in a central procurement
organization together with MRP. Setting source list as a
requirement for procurement you block any Purchase Order
from being created if the material/vendor combination is not
known to the source list for the purchasing organization,
purchasing group and, or plant. This is excellent if rogue buying
(i.e. buying without taking advantage of negotiated company
discounts) in SAP is an issue in your company. This is how you
implement mandatory source lists in your organization:
1) The easiest way to turn source list into a mandatory
requirement is to set this in customizing per plant. Go to IMG >
Materials Management > Purchasing > Source List > Define source List

at Plant Level. In this transaction set the indicator for the plant
that is going to be moved under the tighter procurement
regime.

Define source list requirement at plant level

Alternatively, you can set the source list requirement in the

material masters Purchasing tab. The advantage of this is that
you only put certain materials under tight procurement rules.

Material Master - Purchasing tab

[tip]Especially if the procurement department closed a very costsaving contract for a common (raw) material, you really want
operations to call-off from this contract and avoid procurement
from any other source than this particular vendor. This is where
you really can use the source list requirement for the specific
material.[/tip]

2) Now it is important that all inforecords and contracts are upto-date: update inforecords and contracts where you can and
remove any obsolete ones. This is not a one time exercise: when
using mandatory source lists it is an absolute condition that
inforecords, contracts and subsequently the source list itself is
up-to-date at all times. Outdated and incorrect source lists will
lead to frustration where purchase orders cannot be created and
procurement lead time will increase. Embed this new
responsibility properly to a master data person in the
procurement department.
3) Now that all inforecords and contracts are up-to-date you can
mass create source lists using transaction ME05. In the opening
screen of the transaction enter the data for the materials for
which you wish to create a source list (If you have multiple
sources for a material do not set the MRP indicator. Only one
source with MRP indicator makes sense.). No worries, no actual
source lists are created when you execute the execution button
(F8). Actual creation of source lists is done when you save in the
next screen of the report results. When you are in the report
overview you also set a fixed or blocked vendor by selecting lines
and using the menu.

Generate source list

If you are not happy running a mass transaction you can still use
ME01 for material-by-material source list creation.
4) Last thing is to check that authorization for end-users is tight
enough. Users should only be able to procure for their own
purchasing organization, purchasing group and plant. If this is
not the case, you run the risk of material being procured from
the correct vendor but by the wrong people. Taking care of the
above steps should make your organization rogue-buying proof
from a SAP perspective. Unfortunately SAP cannot prevent users
from printing their own Purchase Orders in MS Word and faxing

this to the vendor or ordering on-line.

Kowboyz BV / CC BY-ND 3.0
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This entry was posted in MM and tagged authorizations, MM on

January 6, 2009
[http://sapmentalnotes.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/sourcelistbenefits/] .

4 thoughts on Source list benefits

Nazeer
January 18, 2009 at 09:10

Hello,
I have a query on a specific business scenario where I am not
getting help from any resource. The scenario is as follows:
My clients wants to have multiple source lists lines for a
particular material with MRP relevance 2. These source list items

are different Purchasing Scheduling Agreements (PSA) with

account assignment M, which pertains to customer scheduling
agreements (CSA). The idea is that whenever there are schedules
lines written in the CSA, the demand created should be
translated into the corresponding PSA when MRP is run.
I want to know if this is possible. In my prototype I am not able
to create schedule lines in PSA.
Thanks,
Nazeer

Kowboy

Post author

January 21, 2009 at 11:45

Nazeer, three things that come to mind: 1) make sure that you
have only one valid source for MRP in the source list. and 2) make
sure that you run MRP with Delivery Schedule parameter set to
3. and 3) your procurement key should be set to F External
procurement with special procurement key 20. Regards, Kowboy

Nazeer
January 24, 2009 at 03:13

Dear Kowboy,
I have been able to make the scenario work in SAP. The problem
was with the choice of item category in the CSA which was not
picking up the correct line item category. Thanks for your inputs
anyway.
Cheers,
Nazeer

Share
June 24, 2009 at 15:57

We have been having an issue with MRP generated purchase

reqs. The vendor from the source list is correct (fixed vendor) in
the purchase req, but the info record is not getting assigned and
therefore the purchase price from the info record is not in the
purchase req. Only one valid info record exists for the
material/plant/vendor combination in our system, so I am not
sure why it is not getting assigned properly.