Business Transaction Processing

In SAP CRM Business transactions are used to describe business process and transactions. It simply represents all the business interaction of your organization with different business partners. In order to understand the business transactions, you should first understand the types of business transactions in SAP CRM.

Transaction Types 

By defination, Transaction types define the characteristics and attributes of a business transaction. Whether it is a sales order transaction, service order or sales call, it determines how the transaction will be processed. Transaction types can be explained by following picture.

In SAP CRM, all the business transaction processing is controlled by the transaction types. Some basic function of the transaction types are shown in the figure above. Some important Transaction types used in SAP CRM are -

Lead      
Appointment
Quotation
Sales Order
Service Order

Prerequisites for Transaction types.

If you want to define a trancation type, you must first have some prerequisites profile that are to be used in the transaction types. Some of them are

Text Determination
Partner Determination Procedure
Date Profile
Organizational Data Profile
Status Profile
and so on...

Customizing Transaction types 

Path for customizing transaction types is - SPRO > IMG > CRM >Transaction > Basic Setting > Define Transaction Types 

T-code for transaction types is - crmc_process_ma

For a basic example in transaction type, we are taking Sales order, which in SAP CRM system is called as TA.

The details of the transaction type TA can be seen in this screenshot. In this picture, the tecnical name of transaction type sales order is TA. The leading transaction category which determines the structure of the business transaction of sales is BUS2000115 Sales. All the other general attributes such as contract determination, quotation determination, commitment date should be set according to the business needs.

The below field represent all the profiles need to be set in order to complete this transaction type profiles.

If you want to make your own transaction type for sales order. You can do so by clicking "Copy As.." and give a new technical name and description and save the entry.

A new transaction type has been created for your sales order.

Item Category

Item categories basically define the characteristics and attributes of a transaction item whether it is a sales item, service item, or any other and determine how the item is processed.

An item category is assigned to one or more business transaction categories (see “Business Transaction Categories” below). Only specific combinations of business transaction categories are allowed. In addition to the general settings for each item category, you need to make Customizing settings specifically for each business transaction category assigned to an item category.

Configuration of Item Category 

Path for customizing Item category is - SPRO > IMG > CRM >Transaction > Basic Setting > Define Item Category.

If we take the example of previous transaction type discussed "sales order". The respective item category for sales order is TAN. 

Item category attributes are much like transaction type attributes. In this also you have to configure all the profile sets and other relevant data as per the business requirements.

Item Category Determination

An item category defines how a line item behaves in sales transaction. The processing of an item in a transaction is carried out by Item category determination. Item category determination is done by four main factors - Transaction Type, Item Category Group, Item Category Usage, Main Item Category. So, 

Item category detemination = Transaction type + Item Category Group + Item category usage + Main Item category