Very basics of SAP External Service Management

These notes are based on SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) 5.0

Firstly -- SAP External Service Management (ESM) must not be confused with SAP
Service Management (SM). ESM is the procurement of services. SM is to provide
services to a client.

With External Services, you have a PO for services with Goods Receipt taking place. The
Goods Receipt is called Service Entries. In contrast with goods (stock or non stock)
where receiving is typically done by the inventory management group, the Service
Entries are done by business themselves. The logic is that the business generated the
request for the service, that is where it was done, it will be best if they do confirmation
that service took place.

Lets look at the traditional SAP purchasing cycle vs SAP purchasing cycle for External
Services.
The big difference is that the item category is D (services) is used. For the item, detail
Service to be performed can be specified. The receiving is a 2 step process. Create and
then Accept Service Entry Sheet

Lets step through the process and look at the documents. The steps are

Step 1 - Create Purchase Requisition

Step 2 - Convert to Purchase Order
Step 3a - Service Entry Sheet
Step 3b - Acceptance of Service Entry Sheet
Step 4 - Invoice and payment (not shown here)

----------------- DETAIL -------------------

Step 1 - Create Purchase Requisition

What makes the PR a ESM PR is the Item category. For goods it is blank. For ESM it is
D (Service). if the item category D is selected, it is mandatory to provide the account
assignment.
Step 2 - Convert to Purchase Order

The PR is converted to a PO. If me59 (automatic creation of PO) is used, the Material
Group must also be entered in the selection criteria, otherwise it doesn't work.

Step 3a - Service Entry Sheet

When creating a SES, the planned services can be copied from the original Purchase
Order.
Where:
- P Plan - Items copied from Purchase Order
- C Unplanned from Contract - Items copied from Contract (was not in PO)
- U Unplanned - Items was not in PO
Step 3b - Acceptance of Service Entry Sheet

This is the equivalent of a Goods Receipt. The result of accepting a SES will be a
material document with movement type 101 (GR against PO). Depending of process the
SES can be created and Accepted by different people. Typically the acceptance is done
by a more senior person.

A traffic light indicate the status of the SES

- Red = Not yet accepted -- only SES
- Yellow = Accepted but still to be saved
- Green = accepted and saved

Additional notes on External Service Management

Release procedure and SES
Release procedures can be build in PR, PO and Service Entry Sheets. (Also possible on
Outline Agreements and RFQ's)

Service Outlines
The services in the PR / PO can be specified in a hierarchy. See this post [sap123.com]
for more information on this.

Outline Agreement (Contracts)

Services specified in PR / PO as well as Unplanned Services entered in SES can be pulled
from a contract (Outline Agreement).

Service masters & Service Conditions

The services can either be free text or Services Masters (similar to material masters for
goods). The prices for these services are stored in Service Conditions. Lots of SAP
customers start using ESM without Service Masters. And even if Service Masters are
used, one do not need to use Service Conditions.

Lets look at a simple Service Master

Account Assignment U
Under special cases (if allowed), an account assignment U (Unknown) can be selected
when creating the PR / PO. In this case the correct account assignment category must be
provided when the service entry sheet is created.

Configuration
The focus on this post is to introduce the concept, so no configuration options are
discussed. See below for config options related to this functionality. Config Menu: IMG
> Materials Management > External Services Management

Transactions
The following transactions were used for above screens:

ME51N - Create PR
ME21N - Display PO
ML81N - Create Service Entry Sheet
ML82N - Change Service Entry Sheet (Acceptance)
AC03 - Maintain Service Master