What is meant by availability check in SAP?

Promising accurate and reliable dates for delivery to your customers is a key element of the order fulfillment
process in todays competitive environment. In the SAP ERP software, the availability check functionality
provides this accuracy and reliability.

An availability check (AC), is the functionality that helps you confirm the schedule line in an order and thus
facilitate the customers order confirmation/ promise process. When carried out in the context of a sales
order, the AC process checks the stock availability for the material in the delivering plant/ warehouse. If
sufficient quantities are available to meet the customer-requested delivery date, the AC then confirms the
customer-requested delivery date on the schedule line. In situations where the requested delivery date
cannot be met because of a shortage of stock, the AC is also capable of proposing a future date when the
delivery quantities can be confirmed for an order. While calculating, the availability check also considers
various lead times such as procurement/production lead time, plant/warehouse processing time (including
aspects such as pick/pack, load/unload, transportation planning time, and goods issue/receipt time), and
shipment transit time. This helps you make accurate and reliable calculations about the delivery dates that
you can promise to the customer. This also provides a visibility into manufacturing/ procurement capacity,
warehouse processing capacity, and transportation capacity.

Types of Availability Check :

There are three types of availability checks:

Check against available-to-promise quantities

Check against product allocation

Check against planning

Check Based on Available-to-Promise Quantities

Here the check is performed against available-to-promise (ATP) quantities. This check considers the
currently available stock and also the stock that will be available in the near future for availability check
calculations. In equation form, this can be depicted as follows:

Check against ATP = Available stock + Future receipts Future issues

where

Available stock refers to the stock available in hand at the delivering plant/ warehouse.

Future receipts represent all the inward movement of goods that can add stock in the delivering
plant/warehouse. Purchase order, production order and stock transfer order are a few examples of
documents that trigger inward movement of stock.

Future issues are all the outward movement of goods that can lead to the consumption of stock from the
delivering plant/warehouse. Sales orders, deliveries, stock transfer orders, and assembly orders are a few
examples of documents that trigger outward movement of stock. Production order, assembly order, and
stock transfer order play dual roles, because they are responsible for the addition as well as consumption of
stock. This type of check is performed dynamically for each transaction. In SAP SD, you can perform this
check with or without replenishment lead time (RLT), which is the time to refill/replenish the inventory of the
delivering plant.

Check Based on Product Allocation

Unlike the check based on ATP, in which allocation happens on a first-come, first served basis, here you
set up a maximum limit for the material quantity a customer can place order for. This check helps with the
allocation of products to certain customers/regions so as to control the overall distribution. This is really
helpful in scenarios such as new product launches, high-demand/hot sale products with limited supply, and
products with higher lead times for production for which you want to restrict the stock quantity per customer
so as to control the distribution of such products to the customer.

Product allocation enables you to allocate stocks to you customers when there?s a shortfall on particular
Material. You can actually define the allocation criteria and a table can be used to upload the allocation criteria
you maintained.
Eg: If 100 cases is reserved for customer A and he orders 120 cases, SAP will only allocate 100 cases to this
customer and 20 will be a loss. System will prompt a message regarding the remaining cases as ``product
allocation Issue``.

Check Based on Planning

Here the check is performed against independent requirements that are generated from demand-planning
applications such as SAP APO-DP. These requirements are generally created for anonymous markets and
are not customer-specific.

How the Availability Check Process Works

The availability check process confirms the delivery date on the schedule line in an order. To confirm this date, the
system uses the material availability date (MAD) as the basis. This is the date on which the requested quantities for
the material should be available to meet the customer-requested delivery date. The system determines the material
availability date by calculating backward from the customer-requested delivery date and subtracting the delivering
plant/warehouse processing time (pick/ pack time, lead time for transportation planning, loading time) and transit time.
This process is called backward scheduling.

The system then checks whether sufficient quantities of the requested material are available for this material
availability date so as to make the delivery as per the customer-requested delivery date. If the requested quantities are
not available as of the material availability date, the system performs another search in the future, taking into
consideration the planned receipts and issues (if allowed in customization). It then redetermines the material
availability date as the date in the future on which the sufficient quantities of the requested material will be available.
Once the system determines the material availability date on which the requested quantities of material are available
or will be available, it starts calculating forward and adding the time for pick/pack, transportation planning, loading, and
transit to the material availability date and proposes or confirms the final date thus calculated as the confirmed
schedule line date on the order. This process is called forward scheduling.

In equation form, this backward/forward scheduling can be represented as follows:

Schedule line confirmation = Material availability date + Pick/pack time + Lead time for transportation planning +
Loading time + Transit time

Activation of Availability check & Transfer of requirements

1) Activating Availability check & Transfer of Requirements at Requirement class level

2) Activate Transfer of Requirement and Availability Check at Schedule Line Category Level

Once Availability check & Transfer of Requirements are activated at Requirement class level, the transfer of
requirements and availability check functions become globally activated for that requirement class in the SAP ERP
software. You can further fine-tune to allow/disallow these two functions for a sales document type by
activating/deactivating the two functions at the schedule line category level.

Availability check can be carried out at three levels :

1) Creating sales orders
2) Creating Delivery
3) PGI



Transfer of requirements

When a sales order is raised, then the system check for availability of goods. If the availability
of goods is not there, then the system creates a TOR for the supply of goods to PP. Then PP can
do procure or produce the goods. This can be configured by creating requirement class and
requirement type and in the corresponding schedule line category requirement had to be
checked.

The MRP department is informed about the quantities and deadlines by which incoming orders
should be delivered. The system checks the availability of the goods based on the requested
delivery date of the customer and creates MRP records which contain all necessary information
for passing on to planning. It ensures that the goods are available in time for the delivery.
Materials planning transfers the reported requirements and creates orders or purchase
requisitions from them etc.
The following sections on the transfer of requirements describe how to control the transfer of
requirements.
The transfer of requirements is basically dependent upon the following factors:
- requirements type
- requirement class
- check group
- schedule line category
The transfer of requirements is controlled globally using the requirements class which is derived
from the requirements type for all sales document types.
For the sales document types, fine tuning is also possible at schedule line level. This fine tuning
is described in the section "Defining the procedure for each schedule line category".
Note that the requirements classes are also used in production so you should coordinate any
changes to the requirements classes with production. The requirements type and, eventually,
requirements class are determined in the strategy group so all changes made there should also be
coordinated with production.

For performing transfer of requirements, you have to carry out the following steps:
1. Each requirement type has to be allocated to one requirement class only.
2. The transfer of requirements must be switched on at requirements class level, the sales
documents at schedule line level.
3. You must define a check group. It is possible to have this check group proposed for the initial
creation of a material master record.
4. Note that a plant must exist for transfer of requirements to be carried out at document item
level.
Requirements transferred to planning are further processed in the module MM. You must,
therefore, coordinate the transfer of requirements with the module MM.