Inbound Logistics: What are the best options to capture freight costs?

Question

We attempted to implement a freight payables solution which was built on Inbound Deliveries> Inbound Shipments> Inbound Shipment Cost Documents.  The PO line items were flagged with a conf.control key which made the above inbound documents relevant.
Very long story short, we had to remove this functionality because of two major issues:
1.     The Inbound Deliveries were created with incorrect quantities some of the time.  When the Inbound Deliveries were created with incorrect quantity those errors caused major problems (e.g., over accrual of freight cost to the tune of several millions of dollars!!!).
2.     Also, when the Inbound Deliveries were created with incorrect quantity MRP went berserk (e.g., when the IB delivery has the wrong quantity that shows up in MD04 and the planners are left scratching their heads wondering why the supplier is shipping so much or so little).
I wonu2019t get into the details of how the Inbound Deliveries were being created but suffice to say they were manually entered by the supplier without the benefit of an EDI transaction- it was more of a manual entry- hence the data accuracy problem.
The point of this post is to gain feedback from other customers who have implemented an inbound freight payables solution with success & understand what processes were used to make your project successful.
For example, if I had a u201Cwish listu201D Iu2019d request the following:
1.     The IB delivery document type Iu2019d like to use should be non-MRP relevant.  This will eliminate the confusion that occurred when planners run MD04 and see all of the shipment notifications.  Also, if the MIGO_GR transaction is used to receive the POu2019s, they will see the quantities on the PO, not on the IB delivery.  This would be good for us from a business continuity stand point.  However, if the IB delivery is not MRP relevant, than your GR does not accrue the freight cost defined on the SCD which short circuits the entire point of having these documents.
u2022     Q:  Have you had any success implementing an IB freight solution with minimum impact to planning / inventory / operations?
2.     As mentioned above, the data accuracy of the IB delivery was problematic.  Because of this issue we have changed our thinking so that we would require a EDI ASN to be sent from our supplier to our SAP system.  Using EDI we feel that greater accuracy would be obtained since the quantities defined would map to what is being picked or at least aligned with what we would expect to be invoiced for.  The problem is we donu2019t know how EDI capable our suppliers are.
u2022     Q:  Has anyone had success implementing this with your suppliers on a large scale?
3.     Are there other inbound freight payment solutions that Iu2019m not thinking about u2013 custom or other that you have implemented & can share some of the specifics about?  Iu2019d enjoy hearing about them.  Since we are re-thinking what we implemented Iu2019m open to any suggestions. 
Thanks so much for your time!
Rich Wortmann

Answer 1

Chandra,
Thank you for your reply.  I'm aware of the freight condition approach you suggest & the ability to define the carrier in the freight condition.
We explored this functionality in the past.  The problem/limitations we've experienced were as follows:
1. Essentially you have to know your freight cost & the carrier by PO line item at the time the PO is created.  Both of these variables we typically cannot predict in our environment.
2. We have a lot of situations where the PO is considered a u201Cblanketu201D where it will remain open for a month up to a year.  Knowing the entire freight cost for these PO's once they are created is impossible to predict so to support the freight conditions we would have to change our business process which would be a big effort for our organization.
3. Our suppliers ship product based on multiple PO's / PO lines, again it is impossible to predict what the per unit freight cost would be at the time a PO is generated.
These factors are what led us to the IB delivery solution which handles each one of these scenarios quite well provided you have good data when the IB delivery is created.
Regarding your second post:  Thanks!  This information is helpful.
Sincerely,
Rich Wortmann