To have inventory posting transactions with posting date in current month in the inventory balance report for previous month.

[Former Member]

Hello Experts,

I kindly request your suggestions to meet the following requirement in one of our SAP Business ByDesign project:

Requirement

To have inventory posting transactions with posting date in current month in the inventory balance report for previous month.

Business case

There can be cases when posting for previous period to be done in current period when previous period is closed. From inventory balance point of view such postings has to belong to previous period even if they done in current period. Not having such postings in previous period inventory balance report lead to wrong figures and stock reconciliation issues.

AS-IS

In SAP by Design there are only 2 dates in material documents(Warehouse confirmation/Goods and Activity confirmation) generated based on inventory postings – actual execution date(posting date that can be selected manually) and document creation date( time stamp created automatically during doc posting). Considering these 2 dates it is not possible to post inventory transactions within current month for closed previous month and see that inventory postings in previous month’s inventory balance report.

TO-BE - ?

Is there any additional date in the material document that can be used for postings and which help us to see posing from current month in previous month?

As an example in SAP ECC there are document date and posting date that can be manually adjusted – this helps to have positing date in current month and document date in previous month. This allow us to post docs in current month if previous month is closed and see this posting in inventory balance report for previous month based on document date.

Is there any mechanism in SAP by Design which allows us to have posting date in current month and see that posting in inventory balance report for previous month?

Will highly appreciate any ideas or input to achieve this requirement.

Thanks & Regards

Shashank Jain

[marlene_katzschner]

Hi Shashank,

when you post with posting date in the previous month has impact on the inventory, which might have unforeseen impacts. So we do not allow backdated transactions, e.g. Inventory COunt as per last month or Warehouse confirmation or ... which might change the result of checks in the past.

You can raise your request as idea in the ByDesign Ideas Forum under: https://ideas.sap.com.

Best regards

Marlene

[Former Member]

Hi Marlene,

My name is Andrei and I am working together with Shashank, Denis on the same SAP byD project. Let me clarify a bit a requirement.

From business perspective we can have some transactions (especially cross-month) which will be posted int the next posting period (month) but from goods movement perspective belong to the previous month. This is normal business practice in many industries and pretty business as usual process.

E.g.:

1. July 2016 is open in the accouning.

2. Sales order has been placed on 28.07.2016 in the system.

3. Products physically left warehouse on 29.07.2016 but goods issue wasn't reflected in the system on time due to some reason (e.g. simply forgot; technical reason; etc.).

4. July 2016 period was closed in the system on 05.08.

5. Business realized that customer invoice is missing and investigation showed that Goods Issue is not posted in the system.

6. Due to July 2016 is already closed in financials Goods Issue will be posted with a posting date in August 2016. This is allowed by SAP byD system,you just need to specify correct Posting Date (Actual Execution On).

Similar example we can have for Purchase Order processing.

In the described scenario the issue is with inventory balance. When user will run standard Inventory Balance report in SAP byD to display closing stock for July, the closing stock won't be actually correct in the system as it will not include goods issue posting (stock decrease) for that sales order. It results to stock reconciliation difficulties.

As mentioned by Shashank and Denis in SAP ECC besides Posting Date there is a Document Date which can be specified manually to reflect actual goods movement date. In the standard SAP ECC stock reporting Document Date is available for selection so proper opening/closing stock can be calculated and displayed by the system.

The question is which options are available in SAP byD to calculate opening and closing stock correctly taking into account transactions described above?

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Andrei

[marlene_katzschner]

Hi Andrei,

I understand your description. The issue is that for inventory accounting you cannot change the inventory in the past (see also the link https://scn.sap.com/thread/3926641 where someone wanted to post the results of physical inventory count in the past).

The idea is that ByDesign is the leading system for the processes. So the idea is that the system tells you in the work list that you should do a goods issue for sales order 4121 and you post it and your stock is correct. So you do it now, no need to post the transaction in the past. The good think with this simplified approach: no worry about having wrong ATP data (actual stock should be in the system), wrong data for moving average (data should be all in the system) and complicated backdating processes.

Nevertheless the are good explanations, why you would need the stock reporting date in an ERP system. If you feel that this feature should be implemented for inventory related transactions, you could raise an idea in the SAP Ideas Forum. Depending on the demand (number of votings) the topic might be considered in the backlog planning.

Until then the recommendation is:

Use your ByDesign system and the worklists as trigger for the processes to be executed. With this you will report the inventory changed directly and the reports are correct. Or is there a legal requirement (not backdating because month closed) to have goods issue and posting on different dates?

Best regards

Marlene

(Personal remark:

For me as being part of the initial development team for ByDesign Payments and AR/AP the concept of "the work gets pushed to the responsible user" is such a cool concept. E.g. that you get clearing tasks for items which cannot be cleared automatically or tasks for not released Supplier Invoices or ..., that I do not understand why it is not used/ promoted more often.)

[stefan_resag]

Hi Andrei,

I tried the following. I closed period July. When doing the goods issue step in the outbound logistics work center (using view delivery proposals and action 'Post goods issue' I manually set the shipment date to July and released the outbound delivery.

The inventory balance report now shows updated data for July. In the General Ledger WoC, view CLosing Cockpit - subview 'Source documents' I posted the document to August.

Can you please check and let me know if this approach works fine?

Best regards,

Stefan

[Former Member]

Hello Stefan,

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

When I try to use action 'Post goods issue' from Delivery Proposal and to specify manually Shipment Date from the closed month I get the following error messages during release: "Error while creating goods movement" and "Confirmation not possible, posting on <date> blocked by accounting". Please, find attached sreenshot below.

Just curious how it worked for you. My understanding is that it is not possible to post any transactions in the closed period that lead to goods movements (e.g. Goods Issue, Goods Receipt, etc.) and to get stock decreased / increased in the closed period. Are we missing something?

You have mentioned transaction Closing Cockpit - subview 'Source documents': please, advise the purpose of usage of this one.

Did it create accounting posting with a posting date in August whereas stock got updated with a posting date in July during Post goods issue action? Usually accounting document gets generated together with a goods movement, i.e. stock update is indivisible from postings into financials. Please, clarify.

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Andrei

[Former Member]

Hi Marlene,

Thank you very much for reply.

However, our world is not ideal. Everything would work perfect with a work list with a sales orders example if sales order processing is a standard and simple process which is not the case for us. In our case (oil & gas SAP byD project) 99% of sales orders are interfaced to SAP byD from the TAS (Terminal Automated System) and each TAS lifting results to an individual sales order in SAP byD. There are more than thousands liftings every day to different customers that leads to thousands of sales orders in SAP byD. So in case interface is down and/or something is wrong with a data in the data feed, it leads to a huge list of sales orders in suspense with a mising GI postings in the system as a consequence. All this results to issues with stock reconciliation b/w SAP byD and what refineries report to us. And issue becomes even more bigger when it happens cross-month and previous month should be closed but there are many sales orders in suspense which will be cleared next month only (best case scenario). It means that GI will be posted in the next month. Worst case scenario - suspense handling can take up to few month. This is a reality.

Anyway, thank you for advise to raise it in SAP Ideas Forum.

My take is that this is a real case for SAP byD functionality improvement, especially for Oil & Gas small and mid-size businesses which want to run SAP byD software.

Best regards,

Andrei

[stefan_resag]

Hi Andrei,

I checked again in the system.

I am not the financial expert, therefore I just can tell you what I did and how the financial periods look like.

In my system the financial periods are like this:

I then did a goods issue for July, but as you can see, July is blocked, but still I can do the GI-posting:

As far as I understood the purpose of the general ledger view under source documents is to see, which documents could be posted in finance and which not. This is also to decouple logistics transactions with financial transactions:

Now I am able to post to another period:

I am not sure why it works in my case and why not in your case. I could imagine that your process control settings are different from my settings. Can you please also check these (WoC General Ledger - view Master Data - Companies.

Best regards,

Stefan

[stefan_resag]

Hi Andrei,

one thing I forgot: in the process control please allow the business process group 'Goods and service confirmation for July', I hope this solves your problem.

Best regards,

Stefan

[lokesh2]

Hi Shashank,

Do you mean this way ? I did this via Migration that posting date last month & creation date : current month.

But you want to do this way when the previous period closed ?

Thanks

Lokesh Sharma