3 Steps to Create Article Assortment and

Listing in SAP S/4HANA

Published on 9 December 2020

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The article master contains information on all the articles that a company procures or
produces, stores, and sells. It is the company's central source for retrieving article-
specific data. This information is stored in individual article master records.

In retail, articles are the equivalent to the material master in standard. For article
maintenance, there are the following transactions:

 MM41 - create article

 MM42 - change article
 MM43 - display article
 MM44 - display changes
 MM46 - mass maintenance retail

Essentially, the article maintenance transactions are the material master transactions
with screen sequence 23.

For background processing of article data, there

is BAPI_MATERIAL_MAINTAINDATA_RT.

For ALE, There is message type ARTMAS. Essentially, this is a modified MATMAS
with certain retail specialties and classification data. Single ARTMAS-Messages just
like the MATMAS ones are sent by transaction BD10.
 The data of the article master are stored in the same database tables as for material
master with a few extra tables. See article master tables.

In contrast to material master, in article maintenance no administrative data (tables

MSTA and MOFF) is written due to the huge amount of data.

In a ‚standard' article master, there are four different main views:

 Basic data: This view is essentially the basic data view of material master, added by
some special retail data on client level (Table MARA).

 Listing: Since retail customers normally have many sites (DCs or stores, table
MARC), site related views are not always created individually, but by a mass process
called 'Listing'.

 Purchasing: This view is basically the purchasing info record (table EINA),
which has been integrated into the article master maintenance for easier handling. If
you jump from the purchasing view to 'Additional data' - 'Additional EANs', you can
maintain vendor specific EANs. These are stored on table MLEA (instead MEAN, as
for the 'normal' EANs).

 Sales: Distribution channel specific data (table MVKE). Prices in the sales view are
determined by a special Retail Revenue Management process. This can be analyzed
via transaction VKP5.

 Logistics DC: Logistic data for distribution centers as well as access buttons to
MRP data, Forecasting data, QM data etc. (table MARC)

 Logistics Store: Logistic data for stores centers as well as access buttons to other
stores specific areas. (table MARC)

 POS: Point-of-Sale data, mainly till receipt texts. (table MAMT with Text-ID 02 and
able WLK2)

 Additional data, Layouts: Besides the additional data already known from material
master and the already mentioned vendor specific EANs, there are also Layout
Modules (Grouping of materials for the purpose of assortment management,
normally embodying the shelf in the store). Layouts are stored in table MALG.

Let us see the technical part how to create an Article using ARTMAS09 IDOC which
will be helpful for Data Migration team to migrate the articles to S4. Below
screenshots and article was created directly in SAP. We can follow same steps and
migrate bulk articles to S4 from BODS.

Article creation using ARTMAS09 IDOC:

Before article creation process we should ensure the merchandise category (material
group), sites and other configurations have been created/migrated in the S4 HANA
system.
Step 1:
Go to WE19 and type Basic type as ARTMAS09

Step 2:
Keep required segments and delete the unnecessary ones.
Step 3:
Fill up the correct values in all segments.

Header data: We choose BASIC_VIEW, LIST_VIEW, LOGDC_VIEW and

LOGST_VIEW. Based on the requirement you can select the views.
Once data is filled in all segments click on the More option à Standard Inbound à
Continue (Process)
Once you process it, an IDOC will be generated and processed. Go to transaction
BD87 and check the IDOC status. If it is in Green (status 53) then article will be
created. You can check the data in article tables which you filled data. Above data
filled in MARA, MAW1, MAKT, MARM, MEAN and MARC
Go to transaction MM43 to display the created article. Else use SE16 and type table
name and validate the posted data.

ASSORTMENT
An assortment is an object to which articles are allocated for a clearly defined time
frame that is an assortment decides if a store, a distribution center or a customer can
receive certain articles at a certain period of time

To create an assortment, use the transaction WSOA1. Through the transaction you
can assign a site to the assortment using WSOA2.
There are 4 tabs which can be used to define an assortment. They are Basic data,
Languages, Material group and Assortment users and correspondingly 4 tables in
SAP WRS1, WRST, WRS6 and WRSZ.

For general assortment we need to provide Sales Organization, Distribution channel

and selection of listing procedure is important .The header data associated with the
creation of assortment in SAP is WRS1. Language tab is used to maintain the
description of the assortment and the language used. In Mat. Groups tab, material
groups which can be assigned to a particular assortment can be added. Any number
of material groups can be included here. Finally Assortment users determine the site
or the store that belongs to a particular assortment.

Loading of assortment using BAPI

The function module BAPI_ASSORTMENT_MAINTAINDATA can be used to load
data from BODS. This function module can be used create new assortment and
change or delete existing material master data.

Separate Jobs in the form of RDS can be created for the creation of assortment and
assigning material groups and users to assortment from BODS.

Now let us see how we can execute the function

module BAPI_ASSORTMENT_MAINTAINDATA from SE37.

Fig. BAPI_ASSORTMENT_MAINTAIN_DATA
It is mandatory to provide the header data and description for each assortment while
creating new assortment in ASSORTMENT.
Fig. ASSORTMENT Header segment
Mark the corresponding filled fields as ‘X’ in ASSORTMENTX.

Fig.
ASSORTMENT Header segment X
Next we need to provide the material groups that are associated with the assortment
in MATERIALGROUP.

Fig. Material Group

Any number of material groups can be added irrespective of each assortment.

Fill the fields necessary in MATERIALGROUPX

 Fig. Material GroupX
Provide the description of the assortment and language used in DESCRIPTION.

Fig.
Description
Similar to the header data we need to mark the fields as ‘X’ for those fields that are
needed in DESCRIPTIONX

Fig. Description
Last step is to add the necessary sites or stores to the Assortment
in ASSORTMENTUSERS.
Fig. Assortment Users
Similarly these fields are marked as ‘X’ in ASSORTMENTUSERX

Fig.Assortment Users X
Now let us execute the function module, if the RETURN parameter is 000 then the
load is successfully completed .We can check the entries in the corresponding tables
WRS1.WRS6, WRST and WRSZ.

Fig.WRS1 TABLE for Assortment header

 Fig.WRS6 TABLE for
Material Group

Fig.WRST TABLE for Description

Fig.WRSZ TABLE for Assortment Users

LISTING OF AN ARTICLE
Listing is the operation that links the article to the assortment. The listing operation is
the creation of a link between an article and an assortment (creation of WLK1
line).To list an article, use the transaction MM42 / Listing view. The assignment of
the individual articles to assortments is recorded in what are called listing
conditions
To list an article, use the transaction MM42 / Listing view. For mass listing use
WSM3.

Loading of Listing using IDOC

Listing condition IDOC –LIKOND01 can be used for Listing of an article from BODS.
Separate Jobs in the form of RDS can be created for loading Listing conditions from
BODS. We need to maintain Article number and Assortment to which an article has
to be listed. Now we need to provide Article number and Assortment in the IDOC
segment and Process Using Standard Inbound the IDOC LIKOND from WE19.

Fig. IDOC –LIKOND from WE 19

After processing the listing conditions IDOC – LIKOND the values get added to
WLK1.

Article Assortment and Listing in SAP S/4HANA

Fig. Listing conditions in WLK1 table

Based on the number of sites, the articles get listed and entries are added to MARC
and MVKE table.

Fig. MARC entry for the article

Fig. MVKE entry for the article