Status Management

The standard SAP system includes four system status settings: Created, Released, Technically Complete, and Closed. The system status allows only certain business transactions; for example, you cannot post actual costs in the phase "Created". Changing the status of an internal order is itself a business transaction and is done in the order master record.

When you create an internal order, it automatically receives the status created. At this phase, only plan values are allowed to be posted to the internal order. Once you change the status to released, you can do most business tasks, including actual postings. Once the event is over, you might have pending invoices to be posted against the order, but you want to block any changes to plan values. For this, you can set the status to technically complete. Finally, when no further cost related processing should be allowed for the order, you can block these by setting the status to complete.

An order has its own life cycle, which begins when you create it and ends after you close it. During this time, costs are planned, posted, and settled on the order. Status management informs you that a particular phase in the order life cycle has been reached, and it controls which business transactions are valid for an order at any given time.

If the standard SAP system status settings are not detailed enough, you can create user-defined status indicators for further control. The system and user status settings together determine whether a transaction is valid. A status can:

• Allow a business transaction

• Allow a business transaction with a warning

• Prohibit a business transaction

For example, you may want to switch to a planning approval procedure for high-value orders before they are released. The initial system status of "Created" will allow the release transaction. To restrict this, you could create an "Unapproved" setting as your initial user status, which prohibits releasing the order. A system/user status combination of "Created, Approved" would be required before the order could be released and actual costs posted to it.

You can also define status-dependent field selections and authorizations for your user status settings. The first allows you to control master data field maintenance during the order life cycle. The second allows you to define which users are permitted to process transactions in different phases of the life cycle.