Lesson 1 of 5
Outbound deliveries
10 min
A sales order is a promise. The outbound delivery is the instruction to keep it: it tells the warehouse what to pick, from where, for whom and by when. Every physical shipment in SAP order to cash runs through a delivery, and the delivery is the document that goods issue is posted against.
At Contoso Motor Co., sales order 1000457 asks for 50 alternators CMC-ALT-100 for Great Lakes Fleet Services, shipped from plant 1710 Detroit. When the material availability date arrives, the shipping team creates delivery 80001234 with reference to the order. The delivery copies the ship-to party, product and confirmed quantity, and adds shipping data of its own: shipping point, route, picking location and dates.
What a delivery holds
| Level | Typical data | Contoso example |
|---|---|---|
| Header | Shipping point, ship-to party, route, delivery date, goods issue date, weights, overall statuses | Shipping point 1710, ship-to Great Lakes Fleet Services, planned goods issue Tuesday |
| Item | Product, delivery quantity, plant, storage location, batch, picked quantity, item statuses | CMC-ALT-100, 50 pieces, plant 1710, storage location 171A |
| Document flow | Link back to the order and forward to picking, goods issue and billing | Order 1000457 above, goods issue and invoice below |
The structure of an outbound delivery.
Deliveries have no schedule lines. Each schedule line of the order that is due and confirmed can become a delivery item. That is why availability confirmation in the order matters: SAP creates deliveries only for confirmed quantities that are due on the selection date.
How the shipping point is found
Every delivery belongs to exactly one shipping point, the place that organizes the shipment. SAP proposes the shipping point on each order item from three inputs:
- Shipping conditionFrom the sold-to party (or the sales document type), for example "standard" or "express"
- Loading groupFrom the product master, for example "forklift" for heavy parts
- Delivering plantFrom the customer-material info record, the ship-to party or the product master
- Shipping pointConfiguration maps the three inputs to a shipping point, here 1710 for Detroit
- RouteDetermined from the shipping point, shipping condition, transportation group and ship-to zone
Change any input and the shipping point can change. If CMC-ALT-100 is sourced from plant 1720 Chicago instead, the order item gets shipping point 1720 and the delivery is created and picked there. Items with different shipping points cannot share a delivery, which is a common reason one order produces two deliveries.
Creating deliveries one at a time
In SAP GUI, VL01N creates a delivery for one order: enter the shipping point, a selection date and the order number. In the Fiori launchpad, the Create Outbound Deliveries app lists order items due for delivery and creates deliveries for the ones you select. Either way, SAP checks that the order is not blocked for delivery (for example by a delivery block or a credit block), that quantities are confirmed and due, and that the items share the header data a delivery needs.
Creating deliveries collectively
Most warehouses do not deliver order by order. They run the delivery due list, which selects all order items due by a date for a shipping point and creates deliveries for them in one run. In SAP GUI this is the VL10 family of transactions (for example VL10A for sales orders). In Fiori, the same app can run for many orders, and creation can be scheduled as a background job early each morning.
| Individual (VL01N / app, one order) | Collective (delivery due list / scheduled job) | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical use | Rush orders, exceptions, testing a single scenario | Daily shipping volume |
| Combines orders | No | Yes, when ship-to, shipping point, route and dates match and the customer allows it |
| Errors shown | Immediately on screen | In the collective processing log |
| What to check after | The delivery and its document flow | The log: created deliveries and items that failed, with reasons |
Public Edition note: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition offers the same concepts through apps such as Create Outbound Deliveries and Manage Outbound Deliveries; there is no SAP GUI transaction access.
- The outbound delivery is the instruction to ship and the document goods issue is posted against.
- Shipping point comes from shipping condition, loading group and delivering plant.
- Deliveries are created only for confirmed, due quantities on unblocked orders.
- Create individually with VL01N or the Create Outbound Deliveries app, or collectively with the delivery due list (VL10*) or a scheduled job, then read the log.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which three inputs determine the shipping point?
2. Which SAP GUI transaction creates a delivery for one sales order?
3. Why might the delivery due list skip an order item?
4. Why can one order produce two deliveries?