MARA — General Material Master Data

Client-independent fields for every material; one row per material number regardless of plant or storage location.

Purpose

MARA holds the attributes that apply to a material across the whole system: material type, material group, base unit of measure, industry sector, and lifecycle dates. It is the root table of the material master; all plant- and storage-location-specific data lives in MARC and MARD respectively.

Key fields

Field	Type	Description
MANDT	CLNT(3)	Client
MATNR	CHAR(18)	Material number (may carry leading zeros)
MTART	CHAR(4)	Material type: ROH=Raw material FERT=Finished product HAWA=Trading goods
MATKL	CHAR(9)	Material group
MEINS	UNIT(3)	Base unit of measure
MBRSH	CHAR(1)	Industry sector
ERSDA	DATS(8)	Creation date
LAEDA	DATS(8)	Date of last change

Common queries

All finished goods

SELECT matnr, matkl, meins, ersda
  INTO TABLE @DATA(lt_fert)
  FROM mara
  WHERE mandt = @sy-mandt
    AND mtart = 'FERT'.

Materials belonging to a specific material group

SELECT matnr, mtart, meins
  INTO TABLE @DATA(lt_by_group)
  FROM mara
  WHERE mandt  = @sy-mandt
    AND matkl  = @lv_matkl.

Materials created in the last 30 days

DATA(lv_from) = sy-datum - 30.

SELECT matnr, mtart, matkl, ersda
  INTO TABLE @DATA(lt_recent)
  FROM mara
  WHERE mandt = @sy-mandt
    AND ersda >= @lv_from
  ORDER BY ersda DESCENDING.

Joins

Join target	Key fields	Purpose
MARC	MATNR	Plant-level data (MRP, storage location, status)
MAKT	MATNR + SPRAS	Material short text / descriptions by language
MARD	MATNR + WERKS + LGORT	Storage-location stock quantities

" Material number with description (current logon language)
SELECT m~matnr, m~mtart, m~matkl, t~maktx
  INTO TABLE @DATA(lt_mat_desc)
  FROM mara AS m
  INNER JOIN makt AS t ON t~mandt = m~mandt
                       AND t~matnr = m~matnr
                       AND t~spras = @sy-langu
  WHERE m~mandt = @sy-mandt
    AND m~mtart = 'FERT'.

Pitfalls

MARA contains no plant or stock data

Fields like storage location, MRP settings, and stock quantities do not exist in MARA. Join to MARC for plant data and MARD for stock levels. A material present in MARA may not yet be extended to any plant.

Leading zeros in MATNR

Material numbers are stored internally with leading zeros padded to 18 characters (e.g., 000000000000001234). Use function module CONVERSION_EXIT_MATN1_INPUT to convert an external number before querying, or use LIKE '%1234' as a last resort.

Always filter MANDT

Without a MANDT filter the query scans all clients. MARA is a large table and cross-client reads are almost never intentional.

See also

• marc.md — Plant-level material data
• vbak-vbap.md — Sales orders referencing MATNR in VBAP

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