When a user department creates its data for a material, the material master record acquires a corresponding maintenance status. The maintenance status is important for finding out which data has already been maintained and which data still needs to be maintained.

The table below shows the maintenance statuses that a material master record can have.

* This data is used for display purposes only. It cannot be updated manually.

A material master record also needs a certain status so that other SAP components can work with it. For example, accounting data must exist for a material before inventory management functions can be used.