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
The availability control is always active, unless you deactivate it for particular fiscal years. The availability control for revenues is not active in the system. You can activate it in Customizing.
For more information on activating and deactivating the availability control, see the IMG of Funds Management Government , section Deactivate/Activate Availability Control .
If the monitoring function is to be effective, you must define tolerance limits in C ustomizing; 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.
Process Flow
Posting with account assignment
The availability control checks begin when you make a posting in the system which involves an account assignment in Funds Management. The system first of all checks whether an expenditures or revenues FM account assignment has been affected by an assignment. Then the system checks whether the 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.
Determining budget object elements
If the availability control is not deactivated, it will first of all determine the element that has budget when you make postings to an expenditures FM account assignment. The element with budget can be a different FM account assignment to the one that was posted. The procedure used for expenditures FM account assignments differs, depending on whether or not you are working with budget objects.
This step is not carried out for revenues FM account assignments. The checks take place with the posted revenues FM account assignment.
Determining a 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 budget profile of the FM area. If you have entered an account assignment without a fund, then the budget profile of the FM area is valid.
Calculation of available budget according to settings in budget profile
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.
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.
Posting without reference to a different document
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.
Posting without reference to a different document
A review of the tolerance limits only occurs if the assigned value is increased by the posting or in Customizing it is defined that the active availability control checks the tolerance limits for each transaction within a "transaction chain". For more information, see the Funds Management Government IMG, section
Determining status entry
If the status is "No availability control", the posting is permitted.
Actions according to tolerance definition and definitions for commitments postings
Result
A exceeding of tolerance limits triggers the action defined in that tolerance limit and definitions for commitments postings. Possible actions are:
Warning
Warning with Mail to funds center manager
Error message
If the tolerance limits are not exceeded by a posting to an expenditures FM account assignment, the system generates the appropriate assigned values based on the existing assigned funds. Note that no assigned value is generated when you post to revenues FM account assignments.
See also:
Determining the Budget Object Element: Without Budget Objects
Determining the Budget Object Element: With Budget Objects