Advance Shipment functionality in Service Order

This blog gives an understanding in S/4 HANA Service module of how to handle spart parts in the scenarios where it needs to be delivered to customer in advance before technician visit the customer place to perform the repair job.

S/4 Service:  Service supports the setup and operation of functions and processes for service contract management, service order management, service request management, service billing, and customer engagement. The service solution also supports subscription order management and is used with various industry solutions.

Advance shipment:  Advance Shipment enables the shipment of service parts to the service technician or the customer before the repair.

In a typical company who provide after sales service process does day to day repaired activity to customer. A Service can be In-house or at customer site, depend upon the agreement with customer or nature of service product.

In a scenario where a service to be provided at the customer site a technician needs a spare part which will be used to fix the product. But if a product is too bulky in nature, technician cannot carry that into his van.

In this case spare part needs to be shipped in advance to customer location so that technician can used this spare part to perform the repair. Shipment of service parts is done by using a service order with a sales order. The use of sales orders allows customer consignment stock to be created. As a result, parts that are actually required can be invoiced after the consumption has been posted.

Until the technician confirms that the service parts have been used in the repair process, the parts still belong to the company and not the customer.

Types of scenarios in advance shipment –

Scenario 1: Service Parts Are Already in Stock in a Warehouse

Scenario 2: Service Parts Are Not in Stock in a Warehouse

Scenario 1: Service Parts Are Already in Stock in a Warehouse

In this scenario, spare is available in the company stock, and we are delivering it via a sales order as a subsequent document from service order release. A delivery will be created from sales order. After picking and packing, goods issue is posted that will move the stock from unrestricted (-) to customer consignment (+). Reservation is completed after the final goods issue.

After the service technician confirms the use of the service part with a service confirmation, the final goods issue from the customer consignment stock (-) to the customer is posted including the material consumption.

Process Overview in System - 

Service order created.

Delivery is created and posted.

Before PGI, Stock overview

After PGI, Stock overview

Technician consume parts and post the confirmation

Stock overviews post the service confirmation

Note: Here details of spare part will be considered from Reservation and sales order just logistic transaction to deliver the spare part (not relevant for ATP). During delivery posting time only system check whether parts are in the stock or not.

This process made available from release 2022 FPS02, if you have 2022 version system with other FPS version, please implement below notes-

3299925 - Advance Shipment FPS1 2022 DDIC

3265840 - Advance Shipment FPS1 2022

3265931 - Advance Shipment FPS1 2022

3336764 - IMG Activity for Sales Order Mapping

I will cover second Scenario (Service Parts Are Not in Stock in a Warehouse) in blog part II

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this blog post. Hopefully the blog post was informative. Please do let us know in case you have any question or query about this process in our Q&A community : here

References:

• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA: here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud User Community: Follow it