What is a SAP Purchase Orders ?

The SAP Purchase Order is the document that shows the intent of the buyer to buy a certain quantity of product at a certain price from a specific vendor.

In accepting a purchase order, the vendor agrees to supply the quantity to the buyer on or before the regular delivery date.

The purchase order contains:

• Purchase order number
• Purchase Order Date
• Required products
• quantity of the products needed
• price agreed between the client and the vendor
• delivery address
• Terms

Purchase Orders are used to communicate the request to the vendor and to give the vendor a written confirmation of the request. It can be considered as a legal and binding document.

The simple SAP Purchase Order is the standard purchase order type NB.

Create SAP Purchase Order

To create a purchase order without any reference to a purchase requisition, you have two cases:

Create SAP Purchase Order with known Vendor

The SAP Tcodes to create purchase order is ME21N Or ME21:

• The new EnjoySAP transaction ME21N : the new EnjoySAP tcode to create SAP Purchase Order allows to enter most of the information in one screen.
• or the traditional purchase order create program ME21.

Or through the path: SAP Menu > Logistics > Materials Management > Purchasing >  Pruchase Order > Create > Vendor known.

Create SAP Purchase Order with unknown Vendor

If the purchasing user doesn’t know the vendor, use the Tocde ME25.
The informations need to create the SAP purchase order are:

• Date required
• Purchase group
• Plant
• Item category

The navigation path is SAP Menu > Logistics > Materials Management > Purchasing >  Pruchase Order > Create > Vendor Unknown.

Once materials lines are added, the user can assign a source of supply (vendor). If a source list is created for the material, the purchase order program will review all relevant sources and offer a list of vendors ( or select a vendor if only vendor is found ).

If the vendor is assigned, you can save the document as a SAP Purchase order and a number will be generated.

Maintain Purchase Order in SAP

SAP Purchase Order can be maintained ( add or remove items ) but have to be resent to the vendor for update and confirmation.
Note that once the PO is created, it has to be forwarded to the vendor by the agreed method.
For example, if the channel is EDI, the EDI code 850 will b used.

If the vendor has already issued an invoice for the SAP PO is received, no changes will be valid.

The Tcode to maintain Purchase Order ME22N and the path is is SAP Menu > Logistics > Materials Management > Purchasing >  Pruchase Order > Change

Blocking or Canceling SAP Purchase Order

Blocking a purchase order item

The purchase department can decide to block an item in the SAP Purchase order if for example, the received products have a quality issue.
Blocking an item will stops any goods receipt for this items.

To block an item, go to tcode ME22N.

Canceling a purchase order item

The same transaction can use to cancel a line of the SAP PO if the client decides if he don’t want any more to receive the product or get some trouble with the vendor.

If the line has has a partially delivered, then only not the delivery quantity can be deleted. If the item is not received yet, the whole line can be set to zero.

The cancelation must be sent to the vendor ( EDI code 860 )

SAP Purchase Order Tcodes and EDI Code

To sum the SAP Purchase Orders Tcodes:

Check SAP Purchase Order Tables: Main PO tables in SAP MM – SAP PO Tables

The main EDI code for SAP Purchase Order

Find details on EDI 850 in this link 

A more detail Step by Step Tutorial how to create a SAP Purchase Order can be found in this link. ( it is a PDF tutorial )