What is Proof of Delivery (POD) Process in SAP?

SAP POD Process (Proof of Delivery)

POD Process (Proof of Delivery) is a process used by some businesses which a customer invoice is created only after the customer confirmation received on the delivery receipt at their warehouse. In addition to the information system will allow recording the POD Process Date, time and the actual quantity of goods that has been arrived.

Some practical world reasons for above mentioned stock shortage can be theft, stock shrinkage, transportation damage, etc. This is very useful when negotiating with the customs forwarding agent as all possible deviations is reflected within SAP.

There are a couple of issues to consider here, firstly where do you get your POD data from? If it comes from the customer, then you can be reasonably sure it is accurate and relates to deliveries that have been checked. Some of the big retailers do have the capability to send EDI POD receipts, but a lot of customers will not be able to manage this. In this case your POD data, if you get it all, is going to come from your carrier.

This means that you are putting extra time into your cash flow, and if you do not receive a POD confirmation within a certain period you probably will want to automatically confirm the delivery so the invoice can be raised.  OD statuses, chase missing items and correct any errors.

POD Corrections

If you have got as far as receiving POD Process differences you will need to make the corrections to your inventory and accounting.  Suppose you get a negative POD difference, this could be because good were lost or damaged in transit, or because of an error in picking the wrong quantity could have been issued in the first place. Those two SAP reason codes soon seem to be inadequate.

If the wrong quantity was issued, then will want to reverse the goods issue for the incorrect item to correct your COGS (cost of goods sold) and your inventory levels. For those items lost in transit, you may want to return the goods and write off the damaged stock. Depending on how you handle your accounting, perhaps you are posting to CO-PA for customer and product profitability you will need to ensure that the sums add up and you don’t overstate your sales.

There are many variations and this is probably why SAP has not attempted to provide you with the tools to correct your differences.  They have however provided you with a couple of statuses on VLPOD to flag if you have completed the inventory and financial adjustments, which you may decide to handle manually or automatically depending on the number of POD corrections you have to do.

Pod Interface

I haven’t really mentioned the POD interface, largely because it is quite simple. An inbound STPPOD idoc identifies the delivery to be corrected. If there is a difference to be accounted for then a segment for the item with the difference is needed quoting the quantity and the reason code. Hopefully you should not need to modify this interface at all. You may need to consider what you do if you get messages both from customers and the carrier. You could accept both, but only confirm if the message comes from the customer.

Also See: SAP SD: Scheduling Agreement Vs Contract