SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2608860 - Cannot Approve Purchase Order - Error: Purchase Order Approval Not Possible

Symptom

When you approve a purchase order you get the error message "Purchase order approval not possible".

Environment

SAP Business ByDesign

Reproducing the Issue

  1. Go to the Managing My Area work center.
  2. Go to the Approvals view.
  3. Find the relevant purchase order.
  4. Select Edit and review the data.
  5. Select Approve.

The error "Purchase order approval not possible" appears.

Cause

One of the causes for this error is that you are the creator / buyer responsible of the purchase order which you are trying to approve. The self-approval of purchase orders is not scoped in the business configuration of your system.

Resolution

You can check whether this setting is scoped by following these steps:

  1. Go to the Business Configuration work center.
  2. Go to the Implementation Projects view.
  3. Select the project and click Edit Project Scope.
  4. Navigate to the Questions tab by clicking Next.
  5. Expand Purchasing
  6. Select Purchase orders
  7. Find and select the Question "Do you want to allow self-approval for purchase order approvals?".
  8. Click Next and Finish.

If you do not want to change the setting in your system you have to forward the approval task to another user.

 The approval task can manually be assigned to a relevant employee by following below steps

  1. Go to the work center Application and User Management.
  2. Go to the view Business Task Management.
  3. Find the task and mark it.
  4. Select Actions - Assign Item and enter the name of another user to set them as approver.

That user will find the approval task under the Approvals view of the Managing my Area work center.

See Also

  2654332 - Error Appears While Approving Purchase Order Document

Keywords

Purchase, order, approval, self-approval, blocked, stuck, error, approve,cannot approve , KBA , purchase order , approval , self-approval , purchase order approval not possible , AP-POP-PO , Purchase Order , Problem

Product

SAP Business ByDesign all versions