Stop requirement transfer when sales order is in approval

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Background

Workflows are a series of predefined steps that can help B2B businesses improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience, and achieve business goals.

In SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, we have quite flexible workflow features available for sales document. Please check detail in SAP help.

Basically a sales document cannot be processed further when it is in approval, e.g. updating sales document, creating subsequent documents, etc. However, some customers complaint that the requirement has already been transferred to MRP in spite of that sales order is in approval. From business perspective it is risky if production department takes requirement into consideration while the sales order is eventually rejected by approver.

Unfortunately, there is no such flexibility in SAP standard workflow feature in sales order to control requirement transfer. This would be planned into roadmap for long term planning. This blogs shows a workaround of how to avoid requirement transfer if a sales order is in approval.

Business Example

Selling company ABC is producing certain material and sell it to various buyers. The company ABC has enabled workflow for sales orders. According to business process definition, the sales order is fully blocked from any business processes before sales order is approved, including:

1. sales order cannot be updated when it is in approval
2. outbound delivery and billing document cannot be created from the sales order
3. the customer's demand shall not be confirmed to customers
4. requirement shall not be transferred to MRP process

Solution

The point A and B in above list from customer's expectation are already covered by SAP standard approval process.

The point C is covered by new feature delivered since CE2402 to control confirmed quantity in sales order approval process, see detail in SAP help.

Unfortunately, there is no standard solution to fulfill point D to avoid transferring requirement to MRP when sales order is in approval. There is a workaround to achieve customer's expectation with some manual steps. This blogs shows how point C and point D are fulfilled in sales order approval process.

Configuration in Approval Request Reason Code

Go to SSCUI 102751 to enable setting "Set Confirmed Quantities to Zero" for specific approval request reason code.

Workflow Enablement

There are some steps needed to enable workflow on sales order. This is not the focus in this blog, please check more information SAP help, or refer to the blog to configure flexible workflow in sales document.

Business Process Testing

When a sales order is in approval with this specific approval request ID, the confirmed quantity will be set to zero automatically.

Save the SSCUI setting and then create a sales order. Make sure the sales order is in approval with approval request reason ID "ZY01".

Go to schedule line and the confirmed quantity is 0.

But now the requirement was already available in stock/requirement list.

In order to make sure the requirement is not transferred to MRP, you have to open sales order and set the flag "Fixed Date and Qty" in sales order item level, and then re-trigger approval process.

Because currently the sales order is still in approval and cannot be changed, go to sales order app and press button to withdraw approval request.

After the approval is withdrawn, change the sales order and check the indicator "Fixed Date and Qty".

The sales is set to in approval after the sales order is saved.

Now, if you check the stock/requirement list again, the requirement of sales order 20457 disappears from the list.

Setting Flag "DeliveryDateQuantityIsFixed" via API Call

In order to avoid manual steps to withdraw sales order workflow and then manually update indicator "Fixed Date and Qty", it is possible to call Sales Order A2X OData API to set this indicator. You can always set the indicator "DeliveryDateQuantityIsFixed" to "true" when creating a sales order. See sample below.

{
  "SalesOrderType": "OR",
  "SalesOrganization": "1010",
  "DistributionChannel": "10",
  "OrganizationDivision": "00",
  "SoldToParty": "10100001",
  "PurchaseOrderByCustomer": "oData v2 - set FIXMG flag",
  "to_Item": [
    {
      "Material": "TG11",
      "RequestedQuantity": "10",
      "RequestedQuantityUnit": "PC",
      "DeliveryDateQuantityIsFixed": true
    }
  ]
}

Please check detail in SAP help.

Conclusion

This is only a workaround to not transfer sales order requirement to MRP when sales order is in approval. Providing more flexibility in sales order workflow is also planned in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud roadmap. Please stay tuned on upcoming product updates.