Returned serial numbers

Question

Good afternoon,
We have the following workflow regarding returning goods:
1) Sales order (sale)
2) Delivery (outbound)
3) Billing
4) Sales order (return)
5) Delivery (inbound)
6) Credit memo
The materials sold here have a serial number profile with the components SDAU, SDCC, SDCR, SDLS, SDRE, therefore the serial numbers are created in the step 1. Although they are copied only until step 2 and no further. The problem is that our requirement is that when some goods are returned, they must keep the same serial numbers created in step 1.
When it comes to step 4, no serial numbers are stored, though.
Is there anyway to achieve the keeping of the serial numbers all across this chain?
Thanks in advance.
Adriano Cardoso

Answer 1

Hello Adriano
You can make this work, but you have to consider a few things:
1) What if a quantity of 10 was delivered originally and only 4 were returned? Which of the original 10 serial numbers will you copy?
2) Do you always create returns with reference? If not and you create a return without reference, what will you copy/propose?
3) What if the customer is sending the item with wrong reference, i.e. the customer received equipment from 4 orders in the past and returns from one of them. But in stead of picking up Order NNN under which the equipment was originally returned, customer enters XXX by mistake in the documentation/Service call?
My suggestion hence to you would be to let the user enter  the serial number manually but have it checked systematically  if it  belongs to that customer or not, i.e., if it has the customer (partner) in the  Serial number master data (IQ03- Location/ Sales and Distribution/SerData tabs.
According to me, these are the steps to accomplish what you want:
1) Config: Maintain sales order types and Item cats in the IMG Activity - Maintain Criteria for Administration of Serial Numbers in Sales Documents.
Path: SPRO/IMG/Sales and Distribution/Basic Functions/Serial Numbers/Maintain Criteria for Administration of Serial Numbers in Sales Documents
2) Make Serial number as required for the Procedure SDRE - 'Serial Number usage' field in T code OIS2.
3) Modify Data transfer routine ( T code VTFL) for the items to fetch serial numbers from the original Sales order/Delivery using document flow (VBFA). There might be some Function Modules to fetch the data. This is not going to be easy.
Hope this helps.