Material document with higher number created with earlier creation date

[former_member131691]

Hi all, This query was raised with SAP Support earlier today - I have added the answer here in the community in case anyone in our community has a similar query. 

Question: If a material document was created yesterday with number 5000001002 how can a document that was created the following day have number 5000001001 (a lower number) ? 

[former_member131691 · Accepted solution]

To improve the performance of the system, most application number ranges are buffered on the application servers. Otherwise, every number would have to be fetched from the database server by the application server in sequence via the network. In a busy system there would be many lock conflicts without buffering.

In the cloud system this is always the case.

Please refer to the information in KBA 1855914 and note 62077 where it states:

If you use several application servers, the numerical sequence will not reflect the (chronological) insert sequence because the numbers are buffered separately on the individual hosts.

The number range object for Inventory Management documents is buffered on different application servers. The number of documents in the buffer is set to 10 by default. So the buffer on each application server hold 10 numbers at any given time. If postings are done on a different application servers, then material document numbers will be out of sync in that sense, and you will see some higher numbers were posted ahead of lower numbers.

The numbers for material documents have no legal requirement regarding gaps unlike accounting documents in some countries.

This is the standard system behavior

I hope this helps further

Kind regards

Brian