Sales Quotation – Business Process
In this training course, we almost always start our modules with introduction of business process. We do it because SAP is a software system made for managing and automation of business
operations of companies. Therefore, it is essential to understand business background before starting learning SAP implementation of a particular business process.
When a customer requests a quotation from the customer service department of our company, it means this customer is interested in our products or services and would like to know how much they
are going to cost for him. We created a diagram that you can find below for better illustration of this process.
Sales Quotation Business Process
After receiving a request for quotation (RFQ), our customer service department needs to prepare a quotation for this customer (our proposal with regard to prices and delivery dates). As soon as it is
clear what should be in the quotation, they will go to SAP and create a quotation using a special transaction. We are going to look at how it is done in SAP in the second part of this module. When
the quotation is created and saved, it can be printed or saved as an electronic document and sent to the customer via Fax or email. After the customer receives the quotation, it is possible that they
will ask for modifications or try to negotiate more favourable prices. In this case, it will be necessary to update the quotation in SAP according to the results of the negotiation. Finally, when a
customer accepts the quotation the customer service department can proceed with creation of a sales order based on this quotation. SAP makes it really easy to create sales orders based on
quotations because it automatically copies all the data from the quotation to the new sales order.
Sales Quotation – SAP Tutorial
Now that we know the business background of working with sales quotations, let us go to SAP system and look what are the steps for maintaining quotations in SAP. This part of this SAP training
module should be watched as a video because the text version will only include several screenshots and it may be difficult to understand some steps. So, go to our online SAP SD training YouTube
video and watch it there or watch the video embedded below.
Create a Quotation
The SAP side of working with quotations starts with creation of a quotation. You can do it in at least two different ways:
Start transaction VA21
Navigate to this menu path: Logistics – Sales and Distribution – Sales – Quotation – Create
Choose quotation type QT and hit Enter. You will be taken to the first screen of VA21 transaction. At this screen, the following information needs to be entered:
Sold to party
Ship to party
Material number
Quantity
Valid to date
You can check what values to enter in these fields in our video.
VA21 – Create Sales Quotation
View and Issue Output Documents from a Quotation
When your quotation has been created it is saved in the database and can be displayed anytime later. SAP has a special transaction for it: VA23. Here are two ways to access this transaction for
viewing a quotation:
Start transaction VA23
Navigate to this menu path: Logistics – Sales and Distribution – Sales – Quotation – Display
VA23 – View sales quotation and issue output documents
Change a Quotation
As we discussed earlier, there may be situations when customer wants to negotiate certain conditions in a quotation. This negotiation will lead to modifications in the originally created sales
quotation. You can apply these modifications in the transaction VA22. Here are two ways how to do it:
Start transaction VA22
Navigate to this menu path: Logistics – Sales and Distribution – Sales – Quotation – Change
There are also cases when customer decides not to proceed with this particular quotation. It means that we do not need our quotation anymore but at the same time it does not make much sense to
completely remove the quotation because we would still like to have it in our database for future reference (just in case). Therefore, if quotation is not accepted by our customer, we “reject” the
quotation instead of deleting it. In order to reject a quotation, you should select an appropriate reasons from the Reason for rejection tab and save your quotation.
VA22 – Reject an item in a sales quotation by setting a
reason for rejection
If you really need to delete a quotation, it is possible to do it from the same VA22 transaction.
Reports for Quotations
SAP ERP software has a number of standard reports that can be used for checking quotations, monitoring statuses of quotations, and finding a particular sales quotation according to elaborate
search criteria. Let us have a look at what reports are available and how to use them.
QUOTATION LIST
This report can be accessed by executing the transaction VA25 and it will show a list of quotations selected according to particular criteria. Everything is simple.
VA25 – Quotations list
INCOMPLETE QUOTATIONS
This report can be accessed by executing the transaction V.02 and it will show a list of quotations that are currently incomplete. A quotation is considered to be incomplete when certain mandatory
pieces of information are missing. The incompletion of a quotation is determined with an incompletion procedure that is assigned to a document type of a quotation in customizing. This is a more
advanced topic and we will consider it later in the course. The report itself is rather simple and can be seen on the screenshot below.
V.02 Incomplete sales quotations
EXPIRING QUOTATIONS
This report can be accessed by executing the transaction SDQ1. It will show sales quotations that will expire soon. Remember that each quotation has an expiration time, right?
SDQ1 – Expiring sales quotations
EXPIRED QUOTATIONS
This report is similar to the previous one but show sales quotations that have already expired. It can be accessed by launching the transaction SDQ2.
SDQ2 – Expired sales quotations
COMPLETED QUOTATIONS
The report for completed quotations can be run by executing the transaction SDQ3. It will display you a list of completed transactions. Usually SAP is configured to consider quotations as completed
when they have been completely referenced, i.e. when the total quantity has been copied to a subsequent document (e.g. a sales order). Furthermore, rejected quotations also considered to
be completed.
SDQ3 – Completed sales quotations
