2608860 - Error: Purchase Order Approval Not Possible

You cannot approve a Purchase Order because of the error message: "Purchase order approval not possible".

SAP Business ByDesign

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.

There are two possible causes for this error message:

• [1] Your user is the creator of the Purchase Order;
• [2] Your user is the Buyer Responsible of the Purchase Order or the Requester (in Items tab). 

In case [1] your user is unable to approve the purchase order because the question "Do you want to allow self-approval for purchase order approvals?" is not scoped in the Business Configuration of your system. That's why the self-approval is not possible.

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.

In case [2], the fields "Buyer Responsible" and "Requester" are taken into considerations during the approval compliance checks of the document.

For both scenarios ([1] and [2]), the resolution is the same.

You can scope the question "Do you want to allow self-approval for purchase order approvals?".

Or 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.

•   KBA: 2654332 - Error Appears While Approving Purchase Order Document

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