Using Flexible Workflow for Contract Management

The flexible workflow for contracts in SAP S/4HANA allows for the automation and streamlining of the contract management process. It enables businesses to define and customize their own contract approval processes, based on their specific requirements and business rules.​

With flexible workflow for contracts, businesses can set up approval rules, routing rules, and escalation rules to ensure that contracts are reviewed and approved by the appropriate stakeholders in a timely manner. This can help to reduce bottlenecks and delays in the contract approval process, and also ensure compliance with internal and external regulations.​

​Additionally, the flexible workflow for contracts in SAP S/4HANA provides visibility and transparency into the status of contract approvals, allowing businesses to track the progress of contracts through the approval process and stay informed about any delays or issues. This can help to improve accountability and efficiency in contract management.​

​Overall, the flexible workflow for contracts in SAP S/4HANA provides businesses with the tools and capabilities to manage contract approvals in a flexible and efficient manner, ultimately supporting better contract management practices.

With the app, manage workflows for purchase pontracts / manage workflows for purchase scheduling agreements, you can do the following:​

• Create a new workflow.​
• Define the validity period of the workflow.​
• Define start conditions for a workflow, such as the company code, purchasing group, document type of the purchase contract, and so on.​
• Define the order in which the start conditions of existing workflows are checked. If you have defined several workflows, the start conditions are checked in the order you have defined. As soon as the start conditions for a workflow are met, that workflow is used. This ensures that only one workflow in the list of your defined workflows is started, even if several workflows have matching start conditions.​
• Define the step sequence by adding and configuring the approval steps in the workflow.
• Define the review steps in the workflow. In the review steps, you can define the reviewers or people responsible for monitoring the progress of the workflow. When a workflow is started, all the reviewers are notified. The reviewers can then track the progress of the workflow. Workflow items pertaining to review steps can only be monitored, and cannot be approved, rejected, or sent back for rework.

The flexible workflow feature allows you to create condition-based approval workflows for various processes. For purchase contracts and scheduling agreements, you can configure automatic, one-step, or multi-step approval workflows. Each step can have one or more approvers, assigned either by role or as specific individuals or teams. Approvers can then approve or reject the related work items using the My Inbox app​

​The flexible workflow for purchase contracts and scheduling agreements can be activated or deactivated by a configuration expert in the implementation cockpit. You can find out which other apps can or must be used to configure the flexible workflow for purchase contracts and scheduling agreement in the SAP Help Portal: How to Configure the Flexible Workflow for Purchase Contracts or ​How to Configure the Flexible Workflow for Purchase Scheduling Agreements.​

By default, all purchase contracts and scheduling agreements are automatically approved as long as you have not defined any workflows.​

Approvers receive notifications about new work items in the SAP Fiori launchpad. If required, you can also configure email notifications to be sent to them. Initiators of the workflow are notified if the work item is approved or rejected.​

If you do not want all purchase contracts and scheduling agreements to be automatically approved, you need to configure the flexible workflow.

With these application, manage workflows for purchase contracts / manage workflows for purchase scheduling agreements, you can do the following:​

• Define preconditions for a workflow: The preconditions depend on the type of release you choose.​ For overall release of a purchase scheduling agreement, you can define start conditions, such as Document Type, Purchasing Group, Purchasing Organization, Company Code, Target Value, Value of the Item, Material Group, Account Assignment Category, and Plant.
• Define the order in which the start conditions of existing workflows are checked by choosing Define Order. If you have several active workflows, the start conditions are checked in the order you have defined. Once the start conditions for a workflow are met, that workflow is used. This ensures that only one workflow in the list of your active workflows is started, even if several workflows have matching start conditions.​

  Define the step sequence by adding and configuring the approval and review steps in the workflow.​

The following is an example of a typical use case for the flexible workflow capability.

A company might use the flexible workflow for a high-value purchasing contract that exceeds $100,000. The workflow can be configured to require approvals from the procurement manager, the finance director, and finally the CFO. If the contract value exceeds $500,000, it might also need approval from the board of directors.