Material Master Related Important Terms (Part 1)

Material Group
Key that you use to group together several materials or services with the same attributes, and to assign them to a particular material group.
Use: You can use material groups to:
• Restrict the scope of analyses
• Search specifically for material master records via search helps

Purchasing Group
Key for a buyer or a group of buyers, who is/are responsible for certain purchasing activities
Use
• Internally, the purchasing group is responsible for the procurement of a material or a class of materials.
• Externally, it is the medium through which contacts with the vendor are maintained.

Purchasing Value Key
Key defining the reminder days and tolerance limits valid, as well as the shipping instructions and order acknowledgment requirement of the material for Purchasing.
Procedure: If you have chosen a purchasing value key, the system enters the values defined in Customizing (for Purchasing) in the fields.

Batch Batches (LO-BM)
A subset of the total quantity of a material in stock, managed separately from other subsets of the same material.
Example: Different production lots (such as paints, dyes, wallpapers, and pharmaceutical products), delivery lots, quality grades of a material.
Batch management requirement indicator, Specifies whether the material is managed in batches.
Use:
This indicator can be set in the material master record manually or, if batches are valuated individually, it is set automatically for the plants concerned, in which case it cannot be changed.
The indicator cannot be changed if stocks exist in either the current period or in the previous period. The reason for checking the previous period is because stocks can be posted to this period when goods movements are entered.