SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2883914 - Supplier invoice self approval

Symptom

While approving Supplier invoice , Approver is getting error: supplier approval not possible.

or

You may see 'approval not necessary' in the changes tab of the invoice.

or

Approval task is not generated for a Supplier Invoice.

Environment

SAP Business ByDesign

Reproducing the Issue

  1. Go to Supplier Invoicing work center.
  2. Go to Invoices and Credit memos view. 
  3. Search for the relevant Supplier Invoice ID. 
  4. Navigate to Approvals tab to view the Approver and the status of the approval task. 

Cause

The approver is same as Creator/Person who posted the Supplier invoice.

Also, an approval task will not be generated if the Employee responsible/Created by person is same as that of the Approver of the Supplier Invoice. The system will automatically post the Invoice without triggering the approval task. This is the expected system behavior.

To verify this : Go to Application and User Management work center -> Business task management view -> All items -> Search for the relevant Supplier invoice ID, there will be no approval task generated.

Resolution

So you have to check mark the business configuration question to enable self approval.

Follow below steps :

  1. Go to Business Configuration work center
  2. Go to implementation projects
  3. Click on Edit project scope
  4. Go to Step 4 Questions
  5. Expand Purchasing
  6. Expand Supplier invoicing
  7. Select Supplier Invoices and Credit Memos
  8. You will see the question Do you want to allow self-approval for supplier invoice approvals?
  9. Check mark it and complete next steps

Also Note :

1.Self approval question only considers the cases where the task is generated by work distribution:Direct Approvers, however, if it is any other Work distribution is used then this question is not applicable.

2. Once the above scoping question is enabled the approval task(even unassigned approval task ) is not triggered and thus the approval step is skipped completely .

Keywords

supplier invoice self approval, supplier invoice approval not possible, Allow self approval for supplier invoice,Invoice skipped approval, bypassed approval, not going for approval,Approval not necessary , KBA , AP-SIP , Supplier Invoice Processing , How To

Product

SAP Business ByDesign all versions