Lesson 4 of 5
Scheduling agreements
9 min
Some customers buy the same products every week, year after year. Creating a new sales order for each weekly call-off is wasteful. A scheduling agreement is an outline agreement that already contains the delivery dates and quantities as schedule lines. Deliveries are created directly from those schedule lines; there are no release orders.
| Quantity contract | Scheduling agreement | |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery dates in the agreement? | No; each release order adds them | Yes; schedule lines hold dates and quantities |
| Call-off mechanism | Release orders (sales orders) | Customer sends new delivery schedules that replace the old ones |
| Deliveries created from | Each release order | The agreement's schedule lines |
| Typical customer | Buys regularly but irregularly | Repetitive, high-frequency demand such as automotive or fleet supply |
| Standard SAP GUI transactions | VA41 / VA42 / VA43 | VA31 / VA32 / VA33 |
How it works
A sales scheduling agreement (standard document type LZ for agreements with delivery schedules) is created with VA31. Each item carries a delivery schedule: a list of dates and quantities. When the customer sends an updated schedule, often electronically, it replaces the previous one. The schedule lines feed requirements to planning, and when each date comes due the shipping team creates the outbound delivery straight from the agreement, for example from the delivery due list.
Many scheduling agreements carry two kinds of schedule. The forecast delivery schedule covers the medium term in weekly or monthly buckets and is passed to planning so production can prepare. The just-in-time (JIT) delivery schedule covers the next days or weeks with exact dates and is what shipping acts on. Whether both are used is a configuration choice.
When to choose a scheduling agreement
Contoso supplies Great Lakes Fleet Services' central depot with alternators every Monday, and the customer sends a rolling 12-week schedule every Friday. That is a textbook case for a scheduling agreement: high frequency, repetitive products, and a customer who manages demand in schedules. For a customer who orders a few times a year against a negotiated volume, a quantity contract with release orders fits better.
- Does the customer buy the same products repeatedly at short intervals?Yes → consider a scheduling agreement · No → orders or a contract
- Does the customer send delivery schedules rather than individual orders?Yes → scheduling agreement · No → contract with release orders
- Is a committed total quantity or value the main point?Yes → quantity or value contract · No → scheduling agreement or plain orders
- Does planning need medium-term visibility?Yes → use forecast schedules as well as JIT · No → JIT schedules may be enough
Cumulative quantities
Customers on scheduling agreements reconcile deliveries by cumulative quantity: the total delivered since an agreed start point, such as the start of the model year or calendar year. Their schedules are often expressed against that total. If Contoso's cumulative quantity drifts from the customer's, for example because a delivery was reversed or posted twice, the next schedule will be misread and Contoso will over- or under-ship. That is why the cumulative quantity, and the point at which it is reset, belong in both the migration checks and the regression tests for scheduling agreements.
In Fiori, sales scheduling agreements can be displayed and maintained in dedicated apps where your release and roles include them; SAP GUI transactions remain the common route in private cloud and on-premise systems. Public Edition supports sales scheduling agreements through its own scope items, so check the Signavio Process Navigator for the edition you run.
What would you do?
Luis, the cutover manager, plans to migrate Contoso's open scheduling agreements from ECC. Priya asks what the minimum test should be. What is the best answer?
- Scheduling agreements hold delivery dates and quantities as schedule lines; deliveries are created directly from them.
- Standard type LZ; VA31/VA32/VA33 in SAP GUI.
- Forecast schedules feed planning; JIT schedules drive shipping.
- New schedules replace old ones, so test schedule replacement.
- Choose scheduling agreements for repetitive, high-frequency demand; contracts for committed volumes.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. From what are deliveries created in a scheduling agreement?
2. What happens when a new delivery schedule is entered?
3. Which schedule drives planning in the medium term?
4. Which SAP GUI transaction creates a sales scheduling agreement?