Investigation brief · SAP SD
Deliver from another company code’s plant and reconcile the customer invoice with the internal charge.
Start with the business or technical outcome
A sales organisation takes a customer order, while a plant assigned to another company code ships the material and needs internal settlement. Troubleshooting becomes faster when observations are separated from assumptions. Intercompany sales separates the company that sells to the customer from the company that physically delivers.
Use a training system with fictional company codes and partners. Intercompany processing depends on enterprise structure, partner functions, material and customer data, pricing and billing configuration.
Think in two commercial relationships: selling company to customer, and delivering company to selling company. A successful goods issue is only one milestone.
What to understand before opening the tool
Understand sales organisation and company-code assignment, delivering plant, internal customer representation, customer invoice, intercompany invoice, pricing conditions, delivery and accounting integration. Exact condition types and procedures are implementation-specific.
Document flow should demonstrate both invoices and their accounting meaning. Currency, tax and transfer-price rules require qualified business configuration and should not be improvised in a learner system.
Enterprise Structure Map
Use it for: show selling and delivering organisational assignments Keep as evidence: company-code and plant diagram
Sales and Delivery Documents
Use it for: execute customer order through goods issue Keep as evidence: linked order and delivery
Customer Billing
Use it for: invoice the external customer from the selling company Keep as evidence: billing and accounting document
Intercompany Billing
Use it for: charge the selling entity from the delivering entity Keep as evidence: internal invoice and reconciliation
Your investigation should produce an intercompany organisation map, customer and internal document flow, pricing comparison, billing evidence and reconciliation checklist. Preserve observations before changing configuration, and test the smallest plausible correction first. If the evidence does not support the first theory, update the theory instead of forcing the facts to fit it.
Diagnose the scenario without guessing
Validate organisation and partner prerequisites first, then trace both billing paths from one order.
- Map the organisationsIdentify sales organisation, selling company, delivering plant and delivering company.Checkpoint: Reviewed enterprise map.
- Prepare partner dataValidate customer, internal customer and material sales or plant data.Checkpoint: Master readiness sheet.
- Create and deliver the orderSelect the cross-company plant, create delivery and post goods issue.Checkpoint: Order, delivery and material status.
- Create customer billingGenerate the external invoice and verify pricing plus accounting.Checkpoint: Customer billing document.
- Create internal billingRun the intended intercompany billing flow and verify internal partner or pricing.Checkpoint: Intercompany invoice and FI document.
- Reconcile the chainCompare quantities, currencies, values, open statuses and both company-code postings.Checkpoint: End-to-end reconciliation.
A useful diagnostic note names the symptom, affected scope, time observed, evidence collected, hypotheses rejected and final corrective action. This prevents the next investigation from starting at zero.
Signals that separate symptoms from causes
The two invoices serve different parties and must not be confused during troubleshooting.
| Document or value | Business relationship | Primary verification |
|---|---|---|
| Sales order | Selling company commitment to customer | Sales area, plant and customer price |
| Outbound delivery | Delivering plant to external customer | Quantity, ship-to and goods issue |
| Customer invoice | Selling company to external customer | Revenue, tax and receivable |
| Intercompany invoice | Delivering company to selling company | Internal price and payable or receivable |
| Document flow | Status across logistics and billing | No unexplained open or duplicate documents |
Common diagnostic traps and safer checks
Configuration shortcuts can make documents post while producing incorrect internal economics.
- Confusing plant with selling company: Organisational assignments determine which entity delivers and posts.
- Missing internal customer data: Intercompany billing needs the configured partner relationship.
- Reusing customer pricing internally: Transfer or internal pricing follows separate approved rules.
- Reviewing SD status only: FI documents in both company codes need reconciliation.
- Ignoring currency and tax context: Use qualified business requirements and configuration.
Turn the exercise into credible portfolio evidence
Build a fictional two-company scenario and draw external versus internal value flows. Show the shared order and delivery references alongside both invoices.
Add a reconciliation table for quantity, customer revenue, internal charge and status. Explain which configuration details are intentionally outside the lab.
Explain it clearly in an interview
Describe why two billing documents exist, which company posts external revenue, which entity delivers and how you trace a missing intercompany invoice.
Peer review before calling the work complete
Ask another learner to inspect the result without watching you build it. Give them the original scenario—a sales organisation takes a customer order, while a plant assigned to another company code ships the material and needs internal settlement.—and the evidence pack, but not your intended conclusion. They should be able to trace the input, identify the main decision and locate the proof of the output. If they cannot, improve the labels, timestamps or explanation instead of adding decorative screenshots.
Use this acceptance condition during the review: Organisation assignments are explicit, delivery and both invoices reference the same business flow, quantities reconcile and accounting postings are reviewed in each company code. Record one question the reviewer raised and the change you made in response. That small feedback loop makes the SAP SD intercompany sales process exercise more credible, easier to maintain and easier to explain under interview questioning.
Questions learners ask
Why is intercompany billing needed?
It records the internal commercial relationship when one company code delivers for another that sells to the customer.
Is the customer billed twice?
No. The external customer receives the customer invoice; the intercompany invoice is between internal entities.
Which plant delivers?
The plant selected in the order and enterprise structure determines the delivering company context.
Why reconcile FI documents?
The SD document flow must result in correct receivable, payable, revenue and internal postings across company codes.
Use current product guidance
Menus, fields, permissions and service behavior can change between product versions or tenant configurations. Check the SAP Help Portal before applying version-sensitive steps in a live environment.
Build the complete skill path
Practise SAP SD master data, pricing, order management, delivery, billing, credit and integration through complete order-to-cash scenarios.
Final perspective
The real value of SAP SD intercompany sales process is the ability to complete a controlled task and defend the result with evidence. A learner who can show the input, explain the decision, verify the output and describe one realistic exception demonstrates far more than someone who has only memorised a menu path or definition.