Who doesn’t know the situation where products which were previously purchased, are suddenly manufactured in-house? Or products that were previously manufactured in-house, are relocated or outsourced to a supplier? So far so simple, but of course the corresponding processes have to be changed, negotiations with suppliers have to take place, and production has to be modified. Not an easy topic, but still manageable for most companies. Then suddenly financial accounting comes along and makes the absurd demand that the stock postings must, of course, be booked to other stock and consumption accounts. For those who have set up their SAP system accordingly, it is clear that the valuation category needs to be changed in this case. Those who are still working with standard delivery need to change the material type. Unfortunately, the problems in the system are only just beginning. Without certain preliminary work, it is simply not possible to make these changes.
Prerequisites for changing the valuation categories or material types in SAP
SAP has integrated large obstacles here, applying to both ECC and S/4HANA systems. On the one hand, all valuated stocks must be booked out before the valuation category is changed, and unfortunately not only in the current period but also in the previous period (error message M3 368 as well as OSS note 1967543 describe quite clearly which basic prerequisites must be met). On the other hand, there should be no open production orders or purchase orders. Fortunately, the second point is no longer relevant, since the message for open production orders or open purchase orders is customizable and can be switched from error to warning (of course, one must be aware of the FI postings that can occur if there are processed production orders or partially delivered purchase orders).
In particular, many SAP users ask themselves why previous period stocks have to be booked out. Here, too, one can find a rather old but still valid note in the OSS (OSS note 30656), which, however, only indirectly explains this issue. It is important to note that postings can also be made to the previous period after the period shift. If the valuation category in the previous period still refers to the old valuation category, incorrect stock postings would be generated, which is exactly what you want to avoid.
Booking out of valuated stocks
Booking out of valuated stocks unfortunately is easier said than done. To quote just a few examples of what we are talking about: there can be normal unrestricted stocks, batch stocks, valuated individual customer stocks, customer consignment stocks, quality inspection stocks, and much more.
For a material, this is still halfway controllable, even if you have a lot of postings, especially if previous period stocks greatly differ from current stocks. An example: if stocks in the previous period are lower than in the current period, the previous period stocks must first be adjusted to the current period stocks to then book out the stocks in the current period. After the conversion, you must work in the reverse direction, i.e. first, book into the accounts in the current period and then book out in the previous period. This can be simplified from an organizational point of view by carrying out such conversions directly after the period shift, as then the previous period’s stocks and the current stocks are the same.
But what if entire product lines are relocated or outsourced? This situation quickly amounts to a 3 or 4-digit number of materials. Then the effort to make the bookings manually is no longer possible since we are talking about one booking line per storage location, batch, stock type, and, as already mentioned, possibly even different periods. One can certainly imagine that with a 4-digit number of materials, the accordingly required number of bookings are 5 to 6-digit numbers.
PIKON has already assisted its customers with these conversions on several occasions and has developed a solution to automate the typical relevant bookings that need to be generated.
Do you have further questions about changing the valuation category or material type or about our automated solution?
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