Availability Control for Commitment Postings
Use
You can define different availability control configurations in commitment postings per commitment value type (examples: purchase requisition, purchase order).
You need this function if you want to stipulate that the budget cannot be exceeded by certain postings (such as purchase orders), whereas other postings (such as purchase requisitions) may be posted in any amount.
There are two types of funds commitment, ”hard” and ”soft”. If the commitment is ”hard”, availability control reacts to an exceeding of the tolerance limits for which an error message is stipulated with an error message. The system rejects the posting. If the commitment is ”soft”, availability control reacts to an exceeding of the tolerance limits for which an error message is stipulated with just a warning. The posting can be carried out.
Prerequisites
If you want to work with hard and soft funds commitments, you must maintain a commitment type profile in the
Funds Management Government
IMG and assign it to your FM area for the appropriate fiscal year.
In the profile, you stipulate which postings are assigned as ”hard” commitment types and which are assigned as ”soft” commitment types. If you do not enter any such specifications, all postings for commitments are regarded as “hard”.
For more information on this, refer to the sections
Maintain commitment type profile
and
Assign commitment type profile to FM area
inthe
Funds Management Government
IMG.
Activities
Availability control checks conducted during budgeting, assigned value reconstruction, or ”soft” postings pass through two steps.
First, the total for all “hard” commitments is checked. If the tolerance limit is exceeded, availability control generates an error message. If the tolerance limit is not exceeded, another check takes place, this time checking the total of hard and soft funds assignments against the budget or release. If the tolerance limit is exceeded, availability control generates a warning. This procedure ensures that ”soft” postings are permitted in any amount while ”hard” postings cannot give rise to a budget overrun.
You can compare the hard and soft funds commitments to the commitments and actuals values, in the line item reports Commitment/Actuals for the assigned budget (annual budget and overall budget)