Introduction and Background
For event-based production cost postings, WIP (work-in-progress) and variance document postings are linked to and triggered by logistic business transactions (also known as business events include goods issue, activity confirmation, goods receipt, technical completion of order). These posting mechanisms automate production costing postings, simplify and accelerate period end closing processes. This also means postings occur in the background, and when errors do occasionally occur, the above-mentioned logistics transactions will not be interrupted or show any errors about failures of WIP and variance postings. Users will need to head over to Manage Event-Based Posting Errors – Product Costing to view errors or Postprocess Event-Based Postings – Product Costing to view and reprocess postings.
Errors most often occur when scope item 3F0 have recently been implemented when configurations and G/L account master data issue account for the root causes of most error messages. After the SAP system has gone live for a while, the frequency of errors will drop, and users may gradually get accustomed to not viewing errors in these monitor apps. This situation may result in errors going undetected.
In this blog, I would like to introduce two ways to monitor errors without first opening any Fiori apps. 1st approach is using insight cards, the 2nd approach is using situation handling, which requires slightly more effort to set up but has more features and is more collaborative than using insight cards.
Insight card
First, let’s start with Order Exception Monitor – Event-Based. This is a dashboard app that shows the event-based production cost posting errors that need to be resolved and the unbalanced orders to be posted, and it has several predefined cards.
As depicted in the screenshot below, click Add Card to Insights.
Open My Home Settings on Fiori launchpad homepage, navigate to Insight Cards, make visible of previously saved card.
Check insight card section on the homepage, the card that contains the error list from Order Exception Monitor – Event-Based. Clicking of the errors will get navigated to Manage Product Costing Errors to simulate posting or Postprocess Event-Based Postings – Product Costing to perform posting.
Situation Handling
Since CE2602 release, a situation template Event-Based Product Costing Errors (FIN_EBPC_ERROR_MONITOR) has been introduced. A custom situation type can be created using the Fiori app Manage Situation Types – Extended and to receive notifications when event-based order posting errors occur. Let's see how it works in below steps.
Create a situation type
Situation Triggers indicates when errors are created, a situation will be generated.
Recipients refer to the teams containing the users who receive the notification.
In Manage Teams and Responsibilities, maintain the team to be used in situation type. The teams may include production accountants, IT users etc.
After the situation type is created and enabled. The assigned users will receive notifications and situations on homepage
Clicking a situation will show detailed error messages and affected orders. Alongside features in situation handling framework, a situation can be assigned and closed.
In the Event-Based order section, several apps can be used to view and handle errors. The most frequently used is Postprocess Event-Based Postings – Product Costing which performs posting for the affected orders once the root causes have been identified and fixed.
Summary
The blog introduced two approaches to monitor errors. 1st approach is using insight cards, which is very easy to use and may be suitable for end users for tracking errors alongside some important KPIs and other insight cards ; 2nd approach is using situation handling framework. This approach needs some steps to set up, but is more powerful, as it can trigger notifications to the right users based on teams set-up, and the situation case has a status management.
You are encouraged to give a try and provide us with some feedback. Speaking of error handling, there is also a great AI feature to proactively identify and resolve errors in production cost postings, refer to AI-Assisted Error Resolution for Cost Accounting in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
