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Metrics type: Cross-Platform Metrics • Category: Ecommerce Platform
Items with open Sales Document demand but zero on-hand. The morning purchasing queue, ranked by Sales Document value.

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At a glance

Materials with open Sales Document demand (confirmed customer orders waiting to ship) but zero or insufficient on-hand stock. The morning purchasing queue, ranked by Sales Document value at risk. The reverse of dead-stock: this is “we have customers but no inventory”. Joins SAP’s open Sales Document book to the live stock position.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your SAP data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A US enterprise B2B distributor on S/4HANA Cloud. Snapshot 03 May 26. Headline: 22 materials with open Sales Document demand exceeding on-hand stock. $1,840,000 of Sales Document value at risk. Top 7 OOS-with-demand cases: Investigation walkthrough:
  1. MAT-A23 at $640K is the priority. ACME Industries has a Sales Document for 280 units that cannot ship; the on-hand is zero. T-code MD04 (stock-requirements list) shows the next production order arrives in 8 days. If ACME has an SLA on delivery date, this is at risk of cancellation and possibly contractual penalties. Immediate action: expedite the production order.
  2. MAT-B41 has cross-ship potential. Plant 1010 shows 0 on-hand but plant 1020 has 60 units (visible via Inventory Sync Drift or MD04). Half the demand can ship from 1020 today; rest from production. Cross-ship costs 4Kbutrecovers4K but recovers 284K of revenue.
  3. MAT-C18: 480 demanded, 142 on-hand. Partial shipment is option; full shipment requires a procurement PO. Procurement lead time on this supplier is 14 days. Customer Gamma Wholesale needs to be informed; if they accept partial shipment + back-order, no problem. If they need full shipment, risk of cancellation.
  4. The pattern is the action. Materials with high-value open demand and zero stock require immediate expedite action. Materials with partial coverage benefit from cross-ship. Materials with adequate inbound supply just need patience.
  5. Cross-platform context: these are materials where the merchant has actual customer demand, in contrast to Dead Stock with Active Ad Spend where the merchant has stock but no demand. Both signals together tell the merchant where to reallocate working capital.
Action playbook:
  • Daily in tight-supply periods: Operations runs the morning unblocking off this card.
  • Cross-ship from sister plant if available; recovers revenue at marginal cost.
  • Expedite production orders for materials with internal supply.
  • Issue purchase orders for materials with external supply.
  • Customer communication for materials at risk of missing SLA.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in S/4HANA Cloud:
Stock / Requirements List transaction MD04 (per-material view of demand vs supply) Sales Order Fulfilment Issues Fiori app Material Availability Fiori app Embedded Analytics: CDS view I_SalesOrderItemSupplyAndDemand
Direct deep-link: https://my{tenant}.s4hana.cloud.sap/sap/bc/ui2/flp#SalesOrderFulfilment-monitor Why our list may legitimately differ from MD04 / Sales Order Fulfilment Issues: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is this card different from MD04? MD04 is per-material; this card is multi-material ranked by SO value at risk. Use MD04 to drill into a single material from this card’s row. Production orders / inbound shipments, do they count? Configurable. By default, card shows current on-hand only (the worst-case view). Toggle to include confirmed inbound supply if Operations wants the optimistic view. Customer SLAs, does the card show them? If your SAP setup uses date-of-confirmation as a Sales Document field, the card surfaces it. Customers with imminent confirmed dates rank higher in the priority list. B2B vs DTC, behaviour difference? DTC orders typically have shorter customer-tolerance windows; OOS for DTC means cancellation. B2B with Net-30 terms typically have multi-day flex; OOS often resolves with customer communication and partial-shipment acceptance. Cross-plant sourcing, does the card surface options? Yes if you have multi-plant inventory visibility. The card highlights when shortfall in plant A could be covered by stock in plant B. Multi-Company-Code: cross-CC stock transfer? Visible but flagged separately because cross-CC transfer is a financial transaction (intercompany invoice in some scenarios), not just a logical move. T-codes for action? MD04 (stock-requirements list), CO09 (availability overview), VL10A (delivery due list), MB1B (stock transfer to other plant), ME21N (create PO), CO02 (change production order).

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

OOS with Open Sales Document Demand is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across SAP and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.