A centrally agreed contract exists for this material

[fortian]

Dear experts,

We have defined an MM contract for a material in a purchase organization. Why SAP is triggering the following  warning (or error according to custo) message while creating a PO for the mentioned material in a different purchase organization?

A centrally agreed contract exists for this material (Message no. 06587)

When would be this useful? From my point of view it has no sense at all.

I already read the following SAP notes 1923072 and 2071522 but I didn't find a proper explanation.

We know that we can skip the message by leaving blank the message type in customizing. But we would like to keep it for purchase order within the same purchase organization of the contract.

Any ideas of why SAP behaves like this?

Regards,

Fortian

[JL23]

I have a totally different opinion on the appearance of this message, I see a lot of sense in it.

It is meant to make the buyer start thinking.

It informs the buyer about the fact that someone else had created a central contract which can even be used by others.

A central contract allows several plants to procure against this contract and benefit from the special conditions (usually better prices) in the validity period.

And it saves quite some work as one does not need to create contracts for each plant.

When this message appears the buyer should check the contract to make sure that he purchases at the best conditions.(or worst case to inform the person who negotiated the contract that he has better conditions)

[fortian]

Hello Jürgen,

But we are talking about different Purchase organizations (and different company codes).

Meaning that a user might get this warning despite the existing contract is not valid for its company!

Regards,

Fortian

[JL23]

But your case is clearly addressed in 1923072 - When are system messages 06 585 and 06 587 issued?

"If a Centrally Agreed Contract exist with a material for which you creating a PO, message 06 587 will always be issued."

"...does not check for Contracts at Plant nor Purchase Organization nor Company Code level in ME21n"

[former_member183424]

You question is already answered in the KBA 1923072 - When are system messages 06 585 and 06 587 issued?

It says "The system does not check for Contracts at Plant nor Purchase Organization nor Company Code level in ME21n, ME22n transactions. Because of this, always the 06 587 message will appear even if in the PO you use different Organization data as in the Contract. Vendor is not a dominant data in this case, these system messages checks only Contracts for Materials and not for Material+Vendor combination. So the system will issue 06 587 in case if you create a PO with not the same Vendor as in the Contract."

[fortian]

Thank you both for your answers. But do you have any good explanation for such behavior? from business point of view?

I believe that normally there is a good business/process reason behind SAP functionality .

Regards,

Fortian

[JL23]

I explained the business point of view above, and the KBA explained that it does not check at certain organization levels. In related notes about this message you can read that it has mainly to do with performance aspects.

Now you have to decide if it is a meaningful message for most of your businesses, or just annoying since most  cannot benefit from this central contracts anyway.

[former_member183424]

You may can have a look into the SAP help document Centrally Agreed Contract - Purchasing (MM-PUR) - SAP Library

[fortian]

Hello Jürgen,

I agree with your explanation but I don't think it applies at all to all (e.g. our) business scenario. We have purchase organizations taking care of several plants, that's why we use centrally agreed contracts (and not plant specific ones).

But if this is because of performance aspects, then OK fair enough...

[ashish_andani]

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