Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA (private cloud, public cloud, and OP) helps determine agents who are responsible for different tasks such as approving a Purchase Order or Sales Order. Responsibilities are determined based on organizations such as Company Code, Plant, etc. and functions such as Operational Purchaser, Cost Center Manager, Sales Order Management, etc. This makes it easy to set up approval process in situations where the organizational structure is complex. That means the approval hierarchy in each area can be different from the org structure.
In this blog post I am going to show you how to set up teams and use the team members to approve a Purchase Requisition. There are three Fiori apps that I will be using in this exercise and they are Manage Teams and Responsibilities (Procurement), Manage Workflows for Purchase Requisitions, and Manage Purchase Requisitions Professional.
Let’s first look at the configuration and define a couple of new Functions. Follow the configuration path below and define Functions if you are on S/4HANA Cloud, private edition or OP. For S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, you will have to login to SAP Fiori launchpad as a configuration expert (BPC_EXPERT role) and do the configuration by using Manage Your Solution application under the application area Responsibility Management.
SPRO -> Cross-Application Components -> General Application Functions -> Responsibility Management -> Functions -> Define Functions
I have defined two new functions OP_LEVEL1 and OP_LEVEL2 as shown below.
Now assign the Functions defined above to Function Profile PROC (Purchasing) by following the path below.
SPRO -> Cross-Application Components -> General Application Functions -> Responsibility Management -> Functions -> Define Function Profiles
Now let’s see how a team is set up using Manage Teams and Responsibilities app.
Open the app and click on Create. You can see in the screenshot below that I have given a name PR LEVEL 1 TEAM for the team and chosen Operational Purchasing (OPPUR) as the type. The system assigns the Global ID and uses Procurement (PROC) as the category. Then you can see that I have chosen two items under responsibility definitions. Company Code = 1710 and Material Group = L002 (Raw Material) Finally I have added two team members APPROVER1 and APPROVER2 with Operational Purchasing Level 1 as the Function for both.
We will create another team called PR LEVEL 2 TEAM as below.
Type = Operational Purchasing (OPPUR)
Category = Procurement (PROC)
Responsibility Definitions
Company Code = 1710
Material Group = L002 (Raw Material)
Team Member = APPROVER3
Function = Operational Purchasing Level 2
The next step is to set up flexible workflow using Manage Workflows for Purchase Requisitions app. Select Overall Release of Purchase Requisition and click on Create and enter the values as below.
Workflow Name = PR Workflow 1
Valid from = 09/05/2023
Valid = 12/31/2023
Start Conditions
Company Code of Purchase Requisition = 1710
Then click on Create under Steps
After clicking on Create button in the screenshot above enter values as shown below
Step Name = Step 1
Step Type = Overall release of Purchase Requisition
Step Properties
Is Optional Step = No
Recipients
Assignment by = Role
Role = Operational Purchasing Level 1
Steps to be completed by = All of the recipients
Step Conditions
Total net amount of purchase requisition is greater than or equal to 1000 USD.
Click on Create button as shown above to complete Step 1 (see screenshot below)
Then click on Create under Workflow Steps as shown above to create another Step. Enter the values as shown below.
Step Name = Step 2
Step Type = Overall release of Purchase Requisition
Step Properties
Is Optional Step = No
Recipients
Assignment by = Role
Role = Operational Purchasing Level 2
Steps to be completed by = One of the recipients
Step Conditions
Total net amount of purchase requisition is greater than or equal to 5000 USD.
Click on Create button as shown above to complete Step 2 (see screenshot below)
Then click on Save button as shown above to complete creation of the workflow.
Do not forget to activate the workflow.
Now to test our workflow and teams we need to create a purchase requisition. Login as a requester and open the Manage Purchase Requisition Professional app and create a Purchase Requisition for Company Code 1710 and Material Group L002. If the value of PR is less than $1000, you will see the approval details of the requisition as below.
If the value of PR is equal or more than $1000, you will see the approval details of the requisition as below. Since we marked the Step to be completed by as All of the recipients and we have two team members with the function Operational Purchasing Level 1 this PR will appear in the Inbox of both approvers and they both need to be approve the PR. Also notice that the second level approval will be skipped.
If the value of PR is equal or more than $5000, you will see the approval details of the requisition as below. Since we marked the Step to be completed by as All of the recipients and we have two team members with the function Operational Purchasing Level 1 this PR will appear in the Inbox of both approvers and they both need to be approve the PR. After approval by both level 1 approvers the PR will go to Level 2 approver.
In this blog post I have tried to show you how responsibility management in SAP S/4HANA enables flexible workflow to flow intelligently determining approvers (agents) using teams and responsibility rules. SAP S/4HANA is becoming a more intelligent system by the day.
Related links:
SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library
SAP Help – Responsibility Management
SAP Help – Flexible Workflow
Similar blog post – How to manage Workflows for Sales Price in SAP S/4HANA?
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- See all questions and answers about SAP S/4HANA
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- Visit the community topic pages for SAP S/4HANA
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Thank you.
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