Introduction
A purchase requisition (PR) is an internal document, raised by an employee or generated automatically by the system (for example, via MRP), to request the procurement of goods or services. Normally, a purchaser must review the PR, assign a supplier and pricing conditions, and manually create a purchase order (PO) to send to the supplier.
Automatic PO creation removes that manual step. When all required master data conditions are satisfied, the system can convert approved purchase requisition items into purchase orders without any buyer intervention, using a scheduled background job.
The equivalent classic SAP transaction is ME59N, which is not available as a standalone Fiori app in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Instead, the same logic is delivered through the Schedule Purchasing Jobs – Advanced app (Fiori App ID: F4686).
Through automation, you reduce manual processing effort, shorten end-to-end procurement cycle times, improve data reliability, reduce entry errors, and ensure consistent application of negotiated conditions.
Prerequisites
The following conditions must be satisfied for a PR item to be automatically converted to a purchase order. Otherwise, the background job will skip the item or log an error.
Automatic Purchase Order Indicator on the Product/Material Master Data
To set the indicator, use the Manage Product Master Data app to navigate to the Purchasing view of the plant-specific segment of the product master data, then select the Automatic Purchase Order Allowed checkbox.
This indicator tells the system that POs may be created automatically for purchase requisitions of this material.
Note
For PR items that do not reference a product master data (free-text items), automatic PO creation can still occur if the supplier has the Automatic PO indicator set and the PR item contains a valuation price, which is then copied into the PO.
Automatic Purchase Order Indicator on the Business Partner (Supplier) Master Data
To set the indicator, use the Manage Business Partner Master Data app to navigate the Purchasing Data view for the relevant purchasing organization of Supplier (business partner with supplier role), then select the Automatic Purchase Order checkbox
If this indicator is not set in the supplier master, an automatic PO will not be triggered even if the material master is correctly configured. The system selects only those requisitions for automatic PO generation for which the indicator Automatic purchase order has been set for both the material and the supplier.
For automatic PO creation, the info record provides the supplier, price, and conditions that are copied into the purchase order. It is effectively mandatory as the source of pricing data, unless an outline agreement serves as the source of supply.
Source of Supply
The system must be able to determine a valid, unique source of supply for the PR item. If two or more sources are equally valid and the system cannot automatically determine a single one, the item will not be converted.
Systems source determination logic follows this priority order:
- Source list entries (a fixed supplier entry has the highest priority; if both an outline agreement and an info record are fixed, the outline agreement takes precedence)
- Outline agreement items (purchase contracts or purchasing scheduling agreements)
- Purchasing info records
- Quota arrangements
If no source can be automatically determined, the purchase requisition item must be manually sourced by a purchaser before automatic conversion can proceed.
Purchase Requisition Item Status
The purchase requisition must be approved (released) via any applicable flexible workflow before the auto-purchase-order job can convert it.
Purchase requisition items that are blocked are excluded from automatic conversion. Only items in Approved status are eligible for processing by the job.
Account Assignment and Document Type
If the purchase requisition item carries an account assignment (for example, cost center for consumable goods or a WBS element for a project), all mandatory account assignment fields must be completely populated before the conversion job runs. If any required field is empty or requires manual input during conversion, the system will not complete the automatic purchase order creation.
The purchase order document type is determined by the configuration that links purchase requisition document types to purchase order document types. When the auto purchase order job converts a purchase requisition of type NB, only the linked purchase order types are permitted. If only one purchase order type is linked, that type is always used. If multiple types are linked, the system's default document type for that purchasing organization determines the selection.
Schedule Purchasing Jobs – Advanced
As a purchaser, you can automatically create purchase orders from purchase requisitions using the Schedule Purchasing Jobs – Advanced (F4686) app. The Automatic Creation of Purchase Orders from Requisitions template is used with the background job.
You can schedule the background job as a one-time setup, then set it to recur. You can set the recurrence, for example, every hour or every two hours.
You define the selection parameters, for example, purchasing organization, plant, and purchasing group.
You can use the option Start Immediately for testing or one-off manual runs.
When the job runs:
- The system reads all open PR items matching the job's selection parameters
- For each item, it verifies: Automatic PO flag set on material master, Automatic PO flag set on supplier master, unique source of supply assigned, all mandatory fields complete, PR item status is Approved
- Eligible items are grouped by purchasing organization, supplier, and purchasing group, and consolidated into as few POs as possible
- POs are written to the database with conditions from the info record or outline agreement
- PR item status is updated to Follow-On Document Created
- A detailed job log records POs created, PR items processed, and any errors
You can view the auto-created POs using the Manage Purchase Orders app.