Controlling Availability Control

Purpose

This process enables a fine-tuned monitoring of available funds. Active availability control can prevent an excessive allocation of funds as soon as they occur.

When you enter particular transactions, such as purchase orders or funds reservations, the system checks whether the available or released budget is still sufficient. The check is based on the current budget profile. The check takes into account the availability control tolerance limits you set in Customizing. You can restrict these tolerance limits to particular transactions.

The Graphic shows the process of availability control in a simplified form.

Prerequisites

Availability control is always active, unless you deactivate it for particular fiscal years.

If the monitoring function is to be effective, you must define tolerance limits in Funds Management customizing; availability control conducts its checks against these. You can define relative or absolute variance from budget values as tolerance limits for budget profile/transaction group/action combinations. Depending on the budget profile, you can also define tolerance limits for individual funds centers, commitment items, or funds.

For detailed information on the tolerance limit settings, refer to the documentation for Define tolerance limits for availability control and Define specific tolerance limits for availability control in the Funds Management IMG.

You can deactivate availability control for individual fiscal years in Customizing and choose Start of the navigation path Budgeting and Availability Control Next navigation step Define year-dependent parameters End of the navigation path .

Process Flow

  1. Posting with account assignment

    The availability control checks begin when you make a posting in the system which involves an Funds Management Account Assignment . The system first checks whether availability control has been deactivated for the fiscal year entered in the posting. If it has been, availability control does not check the posting. The system does not update the assigned values.

  2. Determining the budget-bearing element

    If availability control is active, it first determines the budget-bearing element, if you are working with budget objects. The procedure used differs, depending on whether or not you are working with Budget Objects .

  3. Determining the valid budget profile

    If you have entered an account assignment with a fund, the system first verifies that there is a budget profile in the fund. If there is no profile in the fund, the system determines the budget profile from the assignment to the FM area made in Customizing. If you have defined a budget profile in fund, then this is the valid budget profile. If you have not entered a budget profile in the fund, the system uses the "normal" budget profile.

    If you have entered an account assignment without a fund, then the "normal" budget profile is valid.

  4. Calculating the available budget per the budget profile settings

    In the budget profile, you can stipulate whether availability control conducts its checks against the overall budget, annual budget, released overall budget, or released annual budget.

  5. Checking the tolerance limits

  • First, the system checks whether a specific tolerance limit has been defined for the account assignment specified. If it has, the system uses the budget profile assigned to the specific tolerance to verify the tolerance limits. If no specific tolerance has been defined, the system uses the tolerance limits from a previously determined budget profile for checking.

  • The system first checks whether any tolerance has been defined for the transaction in the posting (example: funds reservation). If it has, this applies. If it has not, the system next checks whether there is a tolerance limit defined which applies to all transactions.

    If no tolerance limit is found, the posting is permitted. Otherwise, the system calculates whether the tolerance limit will be exceeded.

  1. Determining the status entry

    If the status is "No availability control", the posting is permitted.

  2. Action in line with tolerance limits

Result

A breach of any of the tolerance limits triggers the action defined in that tolerance limit. Possible actions are:

  • Warning

  • Warning with Mail to funds center manager

  • Error message

See also:

Determining the Budget Object Element: Procedure Without Budget Objects

Determining the Budget Object Element: Procedure with Budget Objects