About Special Products

Special Products are products that are not regularly stocked (non-stocked), but are ordered, invoiced and purchased when ordered by a customer. During Order Entry (OE30), Special Products are assigned a Product Code unique to the Sales Order. The Special Product code is based on the Special Product Mask field defined in Company Control Initialization (CC00/Inventory Control).

Defining Special Product Mask field in CC00:

  • The Special Product Mask is set up once in CC00/Inventory Control and is used every time a Special Product is ordered in OE30.

  • An example of a Special Product Mask is ZZZZ####. This generates Special Product Codes ZZZZ0001 to ZZZZ9999.

  • The mask is made up of two components: a "prefix" and a "string of numbers" represented by the number sign symbol (#).

  • The prefix characters are one or more characters that will identify all special products. Our example uses ZZZZ as the prefix, however you can use any other unique alpha-numeric code.

  • The number string enables the prefix to be unique. Our example uses four number signs (####) which represents a range of numbers: 1 to 9,999. You can add more "#" signs to meet the needs of your company.

  • The only restriction on the Special Product Mask field is that the "prefix" and "number string" cannot exceed the maximum Product Code length set up for your company.

Using the Special Product Code in Order Entry (OE30):

  1. To order a Special Product, enter only the prefix characters in the Product Code field in OE30. Following our example, enter ZZZZ.

  2. The Quick Product Creation (IM99) screen automatically launches, allowing you to enter basic product and purchasing information. When the Quick Product Creation screen opens, the unique Special Product Code is automatically assigned in the Product field.

  3. When the Order Quantity is entered in OE30 for the Special Product, the product is automatically placed on backorder.

  4. Create a Purchase Order for this Special Product using Create Purchase Orders (PO40).

  5. When the Special Product is received, the backorder is released, shipped and invoiced following the normal processes.

  6. Once the backorder quantity is zero, the Special Product Code is "retired", meaning that the Special Product Code is eligible to be merged or recoded in the Recode Merge (RM) module. For more details, see Enter Products to Recode/Merge RM81.

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