Purpose of this Configuration

Consider there is a business requirement that there should be no Purchase Order (PO) in SAP without a Purchase Requisition (PR). The system should block buyers from raising a PO if they fail to provide a valid PR reference. There are many ways in SAP to go about this configuration, I will be explaining how the same can be done using Function Authorizations and Parameter ID’s in SAP.

We first execute T-Code OMET and create a new Function Authorization: Z1 “No PO without PR” and check mark the field which states ‘Ref. to Purchase Requisition’ and save the Function Authorization.

Screen OMET

At this point we have only setup a function authorization in SAP which will not allow a user to make a PO without a PR. However, this function will not work unless it is assigned to the SAP ‘Buyer’ User ID. This function needs to be invoked by assigning parameter ID ‘EFB’ under the Parameters Tab in User Maintenance.

We execute T-Code SU01 and maintain the following:

Parameter ID: ‘EFB’

Parameter Value: ‘Z1’

Z1 will invoke the function authorization we defined in transaction OMET

Screen SU01

In order to verify that the above configuration is functioning as expected, we attempt to create a PO without any reference to a PR from User ID “Buyer” using T-Code ME21N. We noted that the system gave an error stating “You have no authorization to create without reference to another document”

The error would not go unless reference to a PR is given in the PO.

Screen ME21N

In this blog we understand how we can make use of SAP’s inbuilt functionality to resolve a business issue, without the need for developing a custom code to achieve the same result.

I will conclude by saying that this method is effective only if parameter “EFB” along with function authorization “Z1” is maintained for every single buyer in the SAP system. If any buyer is not configured as per the configuration mentioned above the buyer will be able to create a PO without a PR.