SAPNewbee: Release Strategy in Purchase Order with Material Type characteristics

What is the Release Strategy?

Before we start with the topic of Enhancement in Purchase Order, let us understand the basics of Release Strategy. Release Strategy is a facility provided by SAP on several important transactional documents by the way of which companies can ensure that these transactional documents are first checked & only after they are approved by concerned users, can they be further utilized down the process line as per the type of transactional document on which the Release Strategy is applied.

A typical example can be of the Purchase Order(PO), which is an external purchasing document that requires verification/approval by some appropriate authority in the Company in the form of releasing the same (either a manual or a digital approval), after which the Company’s buyer can send this Purchase Order to the appropriate Vendor for Material / Services procurement.

SAP Reference: SAP Release Strategy

Release Strategy in Purchase Order

Release Strategies in Purchasing Documents like Purchase Order needs to be applied based on certain conditions like the total PO value, Ordering Plant, Company code, Purchasing Organization, Purchasing Document type, etc. To meet this requirement in SAP following steps are followed:

Release Strategy - PO Value, Company, Material Type

Characteristics are created within these Classes(For Net Value, Company, Material Type) based on the respective Communication structure - CEKKO)

Append a Material type field in CEKKO - ZMTART

Classes are created (Classes are used to group together characteristics that are to constitute a release condition for a release strategy. For Purchase Requisition, Purchase Orders, Service Entry Sheets, etc. based on their communication structure, viz., Purchase Requisitions (CEBAN), Purchase Orders (CEKKO) and Service Entry Sheets (CESSR))

Define Release Groups:

Release Groups are created via configuration (Release Group is a group of one or more Release Strategies and assigns the class. This permits the multiple usages of the same release strategy key)

SPRO -> MM -> Purchasing -> Purchase Order -> Release Procedure for Purchase Orders -> Define Release Procedure for Purchase Orders

Release Codes are created via configuration (Release Code identify who can release the external purchasing document. The Release Code is a two-character ID. Further, these Release codes are also assigned to individual user ids of Users based on the Business requirements (for e.g. in PO it is done via the authorization object: M_EINK_FRG))

Group 1 -Supervisor, Dept HOD & Finance Controller

Group 2 - Dept HOD, Finance Controller, CEO

Release Indicators are created via configuration (These Indicators are assigned to the Purchasing document after the release is affected. These indicators determine several possibilities like whether the document may be changed after the start of the release, and in cases, where changes are allowed, does a new release strategy gets determined in the event of changes in the characteristic values in the document and finally, they determine the status of the document, for e.g., if the purchasing document is released for further processing, i.e., a release is completely affected)

Release Strategies are then finally defined based on the Business requirement. Appropriate Release Groups & Release codes are used in a Release Strategy along with defining the Release Pre-requisites, Release Statuses & the Classification values required to completely specify a particular Release Strategy.

With the Release Pre-requisites, you specify the order in which the individual release points (individuals or departments) represented by the release codes may release the document, i.e., affect the final Release.

In this release strategy, the codes 01, 02, and 03 must successively release the purchase order. Read the table from left to right. For instance, the third line for release code 03: For code 03, release via code 01 and code 02 is a prerequisite. That is to say, the PO must be released via codes 01 and 02 before it can be released via code 03

In the Release statuses, you specify the status a PO has after certain release points have effected release. Specify which release indicator/status a PO is to have after having been released via a certain release code

In the Classification, you maintain the values assigned to the individual characteristics of a Release Strategy. Via the Characteristics and their values, you specify the POs to which your release strategy is assigned by the system when a PO is created or changed.

The above details thus explain that when a Purchasing document like a PO is either created or changed (changes relevant to bringing a change in the value of the characteristics in the PO), a Release Strategy is applied to this PO or a New Release Strategy is determined, based on the Release Strategy configured for Purchase Orders in customizing

Customer Exit for PO Release Strategy with Material Type option:

Source Code:

*&---------------------------------------------------------------------*
*& Include          ZXM06U22
*&---------------------------------------------------------------------*

*******Custom code for PO Release strategy with Material Type***** "START

TABLES : bekpo .
DATA : c_bukrs(4) TYPE c VALUE 'BTZ1' . "Company code
DATA : v_ebeln TYPE ekko-ebeln .
DATA : zmtart LIKE i_cekko-zmtart .
DATA : BEGIN OF it_ekpo OCCURS 0 .
         INCLUDE STRUCTURE bekpo.
       DATA : END OF it_ekpo .

*BREAK-POINT .

CLEAR v_ebeln .
CLEAR it_ekpo[] .

IF i_cekko-bukrs = c_bukrs .
  IF NOT it_bekpo IS INITIAL .
    it_ekpo[] = it_bekpo[] .
    READ TABLE it_ekpo INDEX 1.
    v_ebeln = it_ekpo-ebeln .

    IF NOT v_ebeln IS INITIAL .
      i_cekko-zmtart = it_ekpo-mtart .
      ELSE .
        i_cekko-zmtart = it_ekpo-mtart .
    ENDIF.
  ENDIF .
ENDIF.

e_cekko  = i_cekko.

*******Custom code for PO Release strategy with Material Type********** "END

Customer Exit effect on Release Strategy Determination

Create a PO with Material Type - ROH, PO Value - 10,000 USD (23 M Tzs @ 2300 Tzs) .