Contract Monitoring 

Use

You can monitor contracts using the contract monitor. You can, for example, check which contracts have already been released and manage an internal contract apportionment. This forms the basis for OTB reservation, which you can use to reserve contract budget.

Integration

In the contract monitor, you monitor contracts that you created in transaction ME31K or changed in transaction ME32K, and release orders that you created in purchase order processing in seasonal procurement.

When you create and change contracts, the system can also create an internal contract apportionment. For more information, see Internal Contract Apportionment Processing.

Business Add-In

You can use a BAdI to implement a customer-specific evaluation reference for the contract monitor, for example, a different date instead of the latest order date. This BAdI can be found in Customizing for Seasonal Procurement under Procurement Monitoring → Contract Monitoring → Enhancements Using Business Add-Ins → BAdI: Contract Monitor Reports.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for OTB-Relevant Contracts apply.

Features

Flexible selection options for the worklist in the contract monitor, including the following selection criteria:

·        Numerous contract fields (for example, contract agreement date, contract type, document number)

·        Selection of overbooked contracts (the value or the quantity for the release orders is over the value or quantity defined in the contract).

·        Selection of contracts, for which there are release orders.

·        Selection of contracts with reference to a key date for the latest order date.

You can use this selection criterion to check for which contracts a purchase order can still be executed on time for a certain key date. For performance reasons, this search is restricted to an analysis period.

·        Settings for aggregated data analysis in relation to different periods (for example, day, month)

You can use this analysis criterion to perform the past- or future-related projections.

For example, you use values from previous periods to project into the future and obtain clues as to how you would need to adjust the release behavior to fulfill the contract.

The contract monitor enables you to monitor the following contract information:

·        Header and item data

You can determine, for example, which contracts are still open and which have expired.

·        Internal contract apportionment

Internal contract apportionment distributes the available budget amongst the delivery periods. It ensures that there is sufficient budget available for the entire length of the contract. You can process the internal contract apportionment manually.

·        OTB reservation

When creating and changing contracts, you can check available budgets and temporarily reserve planned budget for the whole contract (checks budget at header level) or for individual items.

With header-related OTB reservation, all items in the contract must be assigned to a single budget for each planning period.

Provided you have made the appropriate system settings (see Prerequisites), you can still create a contract even if the result of the reservation check was negative.

·        Release orders

For more information, see Contract Use and Contract Budget.