Cross-Application Mass Maintenance

Cross-Application Mass Maintenance

Purpose

Mass maintenance is a generic (that is, cross-application) tool that can be used to:

Change large amounts of data

This differs from the individual maintenance of objects in a particular application in the following regards:

The user chooses the fields to be changed from a list.
Consistency checks are carried out collectively when the change is saved, not when you actually enter or change a value.
Changes can be made to several objects at the same time.

Mass maintenance is particularly useful when you need to adapt existing data to a change in circumstances, for example, if a purchasing group is to be replaced by another and you need to change the old purchasing group to the new one for all materials at a particular plant that still have the old purchasing group.

Create new data

Besides changing existing values, you may sometimes want to create new data, for example, to define a further unit of measure for a material. For more information, see Creating New Records.

Implementation Considerations

In mass maintenance, many objects can be changed at the same time. For this reason, this tool must be used only by experienced persons. It also requires these persons to be familiar with the field names and tables used in the R/3 System.

Features

You can operate the mass maintenance tool in one of the following modes:

Dialog mode

This is best used only to change small amounts of data.

Background mode

To reduce system load, this is the recommended alternative if very many objects are to be changed at the same time. For more information, see Background Processing.

Mixed

In this case, you start in dialog mode, but switch to background mode to make the actual changes. For more information, see Making Mass Changes.

If you frequently have to change data in a similar way, you can define a variant. A variant is always required for carrying out mass maintenance in the background. For more information, see Variants.

The changes made are recorded in a log, as are any errors.

Constraints

You can use the mass maintenance tool for an application only if its use is supported for the application. It can presently be used for the following applications:

Application	Additional Information in the SAP Library
Appropriation requests	IM Investment Management Mass Maintenance of Appropriation Requests
Article master (retail)	LO SAP Retail Article Master Data
Business partners	LO Business Partner Master Data
Customer master	LO Business Partner Master Data
G/L accounts	FI General Ledger Accounting G/L Account Master Records
Material master (industry)	LO Material Master
Profit centers	EC Profit Center Accounting Creating/Changing a Profit Center (Collective Processing)
Purchase orders	MM Purchasing Mass Maintenance of Purchase Orders
Purchase requisitions	MM Purchasing Mass Maintenance of Purchase Requisitions
Purchasing info records	MM Purchasing Mass Maintenance of Info Records
Rental units	IS-RE Real Estate Management Mass Maintenance of Rental Units
Sales orders	SD Sales Sales Orders
Vendor master	LO Business Partner Master Data