This Blog Post will give an overview on what is Material Type in SAP MM and How to configure it within the system along with step-by-step procedure

Material type broadly classifies a material into different set of categories. If this scenario is considered from a business perspective, they might be using different set of materials like Raw materials, Finished products, Semi finished products, Spare parts etc.…

So, this material type acts as a driving product for material master in SAP system. Based on different type the following things are controlled.

• Number Range
• Field Selection (like what will be mandatory/optional/hidden)
• Based on this whether it can be procured externally or internally
• Whether quantity and value update are required
• Views
• Price Control (this is used to value the material for different types – used for inventory purposes)
• Account Category Reference

This is the most used and the one’s which are majorly dependent on the material type, other factors also come into picture, but it then totally depends upon the business-to-business scenario.

Let’s deep dive into the configuration part of the material type:

The screen are categorized into different sections they are –

• General Data
• User Departments
• Internal/External Purchase Orders
• Valuation
• Classification
• Quantity/Value Updating

Let’s understand them one-by-one (will cover only the widely used ones)

General Data:

Field Reference – This is used to control the visibility and input conditions for the field. Here we need to configure different fields and their visibility status whether it will pertain as Mandatory/Optional/Hidden. These are done for different material type, Tcode, industry sectors… So, whichever field reference is pertaining to this you can use the same.

Screen Reference – This is used to control the sequence of the screens and the field that will be present in the screen. All the screens need to be configured along with the orders in which they will occur and field residing in them. For this I have found an informative blog on how to configure and assign, linking it here for your reference!

Item Category Group – This is used if someone wants to default any value for this material type.

External number assign w/o check – It is only applicable for external number assignment, if this indicator is checked then the system won’t check the material number irrespective of the range assigned.

User Departments:

In this one can select the different views which are required for this material type. For example, in this case of Raw materials to procure it from the vendor at least 3 views should be maintained viz Basic Data, Purchasing, Accounting. Rest can be used for other operations.

Internal/External Purchase Orders:

Ext Purchase orders: This indicator specifies whether the material belonging to this material type can be procured externally or not.

Int Purchase Order: This indicator specifies whether the material belonging to this material type can be procured inhouse or not.

Valuation:

Price Control: This indicates on what basis material should be valued at the inventory level. So, two indicators are present in SAP viz ‘S’ (Standard) & ‘V’ (Moving Average Price)

Account Category Reference: This acts as a middleman between the material type and the valuation class. So, based on the configuration and the value specified in this checkbox when creating a material, it will only show the set of valuation class that are assigned to this account category reference. Below image will give you an idea on how it works

Price control Mandatory: This indicator when checked indicates price control should be mandatory while creating a material for this material type or if not checked it acts as an optional.

Classification:

In this section basically one can default the class and class type for this particular material type if this type is relevant for classification.

Quantity/Value Updating

Quantity Updating: This indicator indicates whether the quantity updating will take place in the material master record for the valuation area or not in case of goods receipt or good issue.

Value Updating: This indicator indicates whether the value updating will take place in the material master record for the valuation area or not in case of goods receipt or good issue.

So here we complete basic configuration for material master.

Next part of this is we need to check the quantity and value updating checkbox for each material type and for the plant which are required.

From the list of valuation area (plants) choose all the required one which will be used for the quantity and value updating for each material type.

So, this completes another configuration related to the material type.

Next action on configuration is assigning number ranges to different material type. For this I have found an informative blog on how to configure and assign, linking it here for your reference.

I hope from this article you have got the knowledge of what is material type in material master record and how to configure it.

Please do provide your valuable feedback on this post in comments section, this will help me in improving my content and share more knowledge with this community, also you can follow me for more content related to SAP!

And if you haven’t checked my previous blog on “ Purchase Order Load with 40 characters material number in SAP S/4 system” you can check by hitting here!