Extensibility for standard fields in the Manage Prices – Sales app

 

Introduction 

Starting on SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1908 and S/4HANA On-Premise 2020, the new app for managing condition records of sales pricing comes in handy in terms of solving previous gaps of Price Management in SAP ERP. Besides the already known features of VKxx transactions like creating, editing, deleting and setting scales, the new app provides the ability to search condition records through on-screen filters, to export spreadsheet file of selected conditions and to import spreadsheet files for mass creation or modification of records. Most recently on S/4HANA Cloud 2202 and OP2022, one can even set up flexible workflow for the approval of sales prices creation and modification.  

Once one is in the process of implementing this new app for a customer, there are a few limitations that can be faced. While Help Portal Documentation and FAQ Notes 2872404 and 2953452 provide solid information about constraints of the app, tips for better system performance and troubleshooting, sometimes depending on the software version that is running, OSS Notes implementations are needed for the full functionality to be accessed. Some examples are the display and maintenance of non-key fields, validity date filter enhancements and the “Export (with descriptions)” button.  

All that said, there is one more limitation about this app, and through this blog post we are going to investigate this scenario and the alternatives to overcome this constraint.  

 

The scenario 

As reported by few colleagues, there are some standard fields very well-known by SAP sales consultants for being key to their customers’ business processes (e.g., Sales Doc. Type, Shp.Cond, ProdHierarchy 1, 2, 3) that are not displayed at the Manage Prices app, even though they’re added to the condition tables through V/03 transaction. About this, SAP says that standard fields without Global Field Name available are not supported in the F4111 app. 

Even so, there are cases that despite the standard field having a Global Field Name available, it can be displayed wrongly at the app and do not behave properly for the maintenance of the condition table. This is seen for the field Country/Reg and is reported through the SAP Note 3214446. 

The lack of display and the malfunctioning of these fields at the new price management app can turn consultants hostage of the VKxx transactions for the maintenance of pricing, even though the app is available in their current software version. But is it really the only possible solution for this scenario?  

 

A solution 

To overcome this, the first thing one can do is to create custom fields using the Custom Fields app and display them for the F4111 app. This is done by activating the Field Usage and Search Relevance at the proper UIs and Reports and OData APIs. Following the steps provided in this very complete blog post about Extensibility for Manage Prices – Sales, this can be achieved. 

The purpose of creating custom fields is to create replicates of the standard fields, for the sole purpose of them being displayed at the price management app. The result condition table at the V/03 transaction for the standard fields mentioned in the previous section would look like the below image. 

So, now that the replicate of the standard fields are displayed at the app, it is time to assign their values. As they are mirrors of the original fields, their respective values must always be equal to the original values from the standard fields. This can be achieved through simple SD customizing when creating the access sequence in the V/07 transaction.  

By pressing the Field catalog button with the lines selected, each one of the custom fields can be assigned to their original standard fields in the Field Overview of the Access Sequence configuration. 

And then, in the Field Overview, the standard fields are displayed at the Document Field column assigned to their respective replicate custom fields.  

This is how the system will, during the pricing determination, assign the values to the new fields using the values from the original ones.  

After that, users can manage prices through the F4111 app normally even if those standard fields were not displayed originally.  

Obs.: if after creating the custom fields they are not being displayed or are malfunctioning, please refer to OSS Notes that may be appliable to your system, since there are a few about this matter. The software version used in this blog post was S4CORE 105 – SP 0002 (S/4HANA 2020 – FPS02). 

 

Conclusion 

The solution presented here is intended to require the lowest effort possible to overcome the situation, other than respect the 5 Golden Rules and to keep the core clean. It in fact can be implemented by a solo functional consultant. But yet, it can have disadvantages for some business scenarios. The main loss of using custom fields as replicates of standard fields is that the domain of the standard data element is lost. This means that neither inside the app nor in the VKxx transactions those fields are going to have value help, validation or conversion. Of course, through coding it is possible to assign value help for the custom fields, but it would require developer effort. 

Alternatively, there is a document in Note 3261750 providing steps to make extensions in the objects that are relevant for the F4111 app. This is achieved through developer activity, but since it adds the real standard fields to the Manage Prices – Sales, it brings its value help and text, altogether with the display of the fields. 

Furthermore, a few improvement requests have been opened at SAP Customer Influence, but they have been closed as “out of scope”. The decision makers say that including the rest of the standard fields of V/03 “is considered for the future roadmap planning of S/4HANA Cloud, private edition or S/4HANA On-Premise without any commitments”. Indeed, for the next couple of years there is nothing planned on this matter in the SAP Road Map. So, at least for now, the solutions presented in this blog post are possible ones to overcome the matter, while SAP can put this subject on schedule in the future. 

Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2023/09/04/extensibility-for-standard-fields-in-the-manage-prices-sales-app/