Version Management in SAP S/4HANA for central procurement - Central Purchase Contracts

[Anupam1]

Version management - Introduction

In the case of procurement transactions extending over a longer period of time (for example, in the procurement of capital goods), you may need to differentiate between various versions of the purchasing document. You may also need to refer to one particular version when corresponding with the supplier

Version Management enables you to generate and manage versions of purchasing documents. A version groups together the change documents generated  during subsequent processing of relevant documents. A version thus indicates the revision level of a document (version 0 = original document, versions 1 + = revisions) and provides the user with an overview of the various changes that may have been made in the course of time.

 

Version Management in Central Purchase Contracts

Version management in central purchase contracts enables you to manage the versioning of the document. A new version is created when the version-relevant fields of an approved or rejected central purchase contract are changed and saved. A version thus indicates the revision level of the central purchase contract.

In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, as a configuration user, you can configure the settings to manage the versioning of a central purchase contract. You can also define reasons for changes that result in the creation of newer versions. To do this, you can navigate to the configuration app Configure Your Solution --> Sourcing and Procurement  --> General Settings  --> Version Management in the app Manage Your Solutions.

You can use the following configuration steps to configure version management for central purchase contracts:

Accessing Manage Your Solutions App

Login through user having configuration expert role to access the app

 

Configure Version Management

In this node, you will have an option to set-up version management for purchasing documents and  also to define the reason for version relevant changes.

 

Set Up Version Management for Purchasing Documents

As a Configuration expert user, you will have the provision to enable version management for central purchase contract and hierarchical central purchase contracts. You can enable version management for combination of document type and central purchase organization. Also, through this customizing, you have the provision to make Reason for Version & Purchaser note as Mandatory or Optional .

You can choose New Entries option to enable version management for set of document types and central purchasing organization.

 

Define Field Selection for Version Management

As a Configuration Expert, you have the provision to define selected set of fields, changing the values of those fields will create new version for the purchasing document.

To maintain the customizing, select the required document type and click on Purchasing Document field details.

In the Change View “Purchasing document Field Details”: Overview screen.

You will have provision to maintain Version-relevant fields for nodes such as header, item, distribution, conditions & notes. Choose the option of “New Entries” to maintain new field information and click on Save to save the information.

 

Version History in Central Purchase Contract

As central purchaser,  you can compare the changes between two versions of the central purchase contracts. You can view versions created for central purchase contracts under the new facet Version History.

 

Version Comparison in Central Purchase Contract

Central Purchaser can compare between two versions . On selection of any two-versions, the action Compare is enabled.

When you click on the Compare action, the version comparison screen is displayed

 

 

Conclusion

Version Management in a purchasing document really help to track down the changes done over the period of time for a particular document. It really helps the purchaser to view changes made in purchasing document like contract which extends over longer period of time. Especially incase of price & payment terms changes over period of time, version management really help keep the track of these changes & help purchaser to look at the trends by comparing versions

 

Kindly share your feedback, thoughts or any queries regarding this post, in the comments section below. In case of any further queries, feel free to write back to ask or ask a question in the forum!

Central Procurement Community Page – Ask a question

For more information on SAP S/4HANA for Central Procurement, check out the below links:

SAP Help Portal Product page

Central Procurement Community Page

 

 

[former_member342014]

Hello Anupam,

Wonderful blog. I have some questions :

1. As I understand, it is also possible to set up version management for central purchase contract and the hierarchical central purchase contracts as the same time. Right ?


2. Is there any recommendation from SAP to not enable version management at central purchase contract level as it could lead to potential performance problem. If so, would you be kind to explain the same.


3. If we activate the version management at the central purchase contract level, is the version history tab is activated by default at the central purchase contract level.

Thank you and once again thanks for the nice blog.

BR

Manish

[Anupam1]

Hi Manish,

Thanks for the appreciating the blog. Please find below the answers with respect to your query

1. Correct, Version management can be activated for both central purchase contracts & hierarchy contracts.


2. We don't have any such recommendations as part of standard, but if version management is active for Hierarchy contract level then it makes sense not to enable the same for central contracts(brand contracts) to avoid duplicate data creation


3. After enabling version management for central contract, version history tab will be displayed in central contracts after first Save(Release) of the document.

Regards

Anupam

[former_member342014]

Thank you Anupam for your answers 🙂 Helps a lot.

[Jacques-Antoine]

Thank you for the share!

Is it possible to revert to a former contract version?

For example to go back to version 4 when we are in version 5?

• The Version 4 of the contract has been approved.


• You add new items to the contract, which creates the V5 of the contract.


• You send the V5 to approval and it is rejected due to inconsistencies in the newly added item that the approvers require to be removed and replaced by another one.


• Therefore the V5 is sent back to revision. This is here where we would like the system to allow the customer to revert to the V4 instead of going back to the V5.

Is it possible?

Thank you for your attention

Best

Jacques-Antoine

[former_member140343]

Hi anupam_kumar ,

 

Thanks for the wonderful blog. I have some questions here:

1. What is the difference in behaviour of versioning between 2 node of customizing you have provided here ?


2. I have a scenario from our system:
   
   
   
   1. Versioning is activate at document level i.e. first node in customizing
   
   
   2. Version relevant fields are maintained
   
   
   3. Now if I am changing non versioning relevant field then also versions are creating; is it due to first node?
   
   
   4. In case point 3 is yes then what is the purpose of providing provision of field level versioning?
   
   
   
   

 

Regards,

Madhu Omer