SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2993306 - Time entry Error: Purchase Order Mandatory for Project of a Different Company

Symptom

Purchase order not available in the service agent's timesheet or "Purchase order item not valid".

Environment

SAP Business ByDesign

Reproducing the Issue

  1. Navigate to the Time Administration work center.
  2. Go to the Employees view.
  3. Search for the specific employee and select them.
  4. Click on Edit.
  5. Go to the Employee Times tab.
  6. Add a new row to input time entry details.
  7. Add a Project Task and fill in other required details, then click Enter.
  8. At this point, you receive an error message: "Purchase Order Mandatory for Project of a Different Company."
  9. When you open the Purchase Order dropdown menu, no options are available.
  10. If you manually enter a Purchase Order ID, you encounter a new error: "Purchase order item not valid."

Cause

Cause 1: The project task is not used as the account assignment in the purchase order.

Cause 2: The employee is hired for Company XX, which can be verified by navigating to Time Administration > Employees > General or in Personal Profile > General Tab > Organizational Data.

However, on the Service Agent screen, the Supplier is listed as YY and Service Performer for is also YY. This information can be found in:

  1. Supplier Base Work Center > Service Agent View.
  2. Search for the Service Agent and open it.
  3. Go to Relationships Tab.
  4. By checking the "Is Service Performer For", you can see that it is set to YY.

Since neither the Supplier nor Service Performer for is listed as XX—and the Purchase Order (PO) specifies Supplier XX—the employee is unable to use this PO.

Resolution

Resolution for cause 1: 

  1. Ensure the use of a Purchase Order created from the project.
    OR
  2. Ensure the account assignment is set to "Project Task" when creating a manual Purchase Order, and that the Purchase Order is used in the timesheet.

Resolution for cause 2:

  1. Go to the Supplier Base work center > Service Agent view > Relationships Tab and change Service Performer For to XX (the Supplier may be YY).
    OR
  2. Go to the Supplier Base work center > Service Agent view > General Tab and change Supplier to XX (this is the ideal approach since the employee is hired for Company XX). Also, in the Relationships Tab, change Service Performer For to XX.

Keywords

Not valid, Missing, Purchase order, Project, Time sheet , KBA , AP-TIM-CAL , Employee Time Calendar , AP-PRO , Project Processing , How To

Product

SAP Business ByDesign all versions