In this blog, I am sharing basic overview of SAP sales and distribution processes,

Sales – Outline Agreements:
Contracts
Quantity or value based without specific delivery dates; require release orders
Pricing (procedure and/or discounts) is based on contract, not the release order

Scheduling Agreements
Can be thought of as contracts with schedule lines
A delivery note is created directly from the scheduling agreement (a release order is not relevant)

Sales – Create with Reference:
Referencing
When using full referencing, you cannot change quantities or delete items.
You can control when an item is considered complete.
The natural order of referencing: Inquiry to Quotation to Sales Order
Copy Rules are used to determine when documents are allowed to reference one another. The system checks whether both sales documents are for the same customer, whether the item is cancelled &/or fully or partially referenced, and whether the document is still valid.
Messages can appear during sales document creationto inform the user that an open quotation or contract exists.

Shipping Point and Route Determination:
Shipping Points
A delivery always starts from one shipping point
A shipping point is determined by:
Shipping conditions
Loading group
Plant

Routes
The route in a sales document is determined by:
Country and transportation zone of the shipping point
Shipping conditions of the sold-to party
Transportation group assigned to the material
Country and transportation zone of the ship-to party

Delivery and Transportation Scheduling:
Delivery scheduling in the broad sense consists of delivery scheduling and transportation scheduling.
Delivery scheduling includes the following time periods
Load time
Pick/pack time
Transportation scheduling includes:
Transit time
Transportation lead time
If backward scheduling determines that one of the deadlines is in the past or that a material is not available, then forward scheduling is carried out.

Availability Check:
Availability checks take into account
Current stock
Planned receipts (P.O.s , purchase requisitions, planned orders)
Planned issues (sales orders, deliveries, reservations)
SAP is capable of performing availability checks in multiple plants.
While creating the delivery, the system can carry out an availability check even if it was checked at order entry time.
Checking availability at delivery time ensures that any changes in the stock/requirement situation are taken into consideration.
Delivery creation reduces order requirements and increases delivery requirements.
As of 4.0, all availability checking is handled on a dedicated ATP server.

Backorder Processing and Rescheduling:
Backorder Processing allows you to determine how you want to allocate available-to-promise quantities.
Rescheduling is an automatic reallocation of the ATP quantities.
Setting the fixed date and quantity field on a sales order prevents another user from altering the order’s confirmed quantities through backorder processing or rescheduling.

Partner Determination:
Partner functions describe the roles and responsibilities of internal and external parties.
The partner type dictates how a partner will be represented in the system (customer, vendor, employee, etc.)
You can define which partner functions are permitted and mandatory on the customer master and in sales documents through the configuration of partner procedures.
In sales documents, you can control which partners can be maintained at the header or item level.

Thank You for reading this blog!