16.5    Availability Check

Customers care about the price, quality, and availability of goods on the requested delivery date. Remember that during sales order creation, you can check in the SAP system whether the required material is available on the requested date and can thus be delivered on time. For the availability check, SD is closely integrated with Materials Management (MM) and Production Planning (PP) components of SAP so that a delivery date can be confirmed for the customer.

Because the availability check in the SAP system occurs at the plant and storage location level, it’s crucial that the storage location be specified in the sales order. You can set various availability check methods in the SAP system (e.g., considering the available warehouse stock and planned receipts and issues, using product allocations for individual customers or regions, or using forecasting).

If the availability check is positive, it’s confirmed with a sales order. If it’s negative, the desired goods are manufactured (for in-house production) or ordered (for external procurement).

Transaction VA01 (Create Sales Order) includes the Availability Check button at the bottom of the screen (not shown in the figure). To familiarize yourself with the function, create a new sales order with the master records you’ve already created. Don’t save it yet, but select the item. Click to run an availability check.

Figure 16.14 shows that the desired quantity can be confirmed for the delivery date. A scheduling agreement delivery schedule arises if, for example, the customer orders 400 pieces and requires 200 pieces in 10 days and the other 200 pieces in two months. You can check these scheduling agreement delivery schedules against the availability check (e.g., whether the delivery can be made on time for the desired point in time).

Figure 16.14    Implementing the Availability Check