Daily Inventory operations includes receipt and issue of goods. For goods issue, companies usually use the reservation process. A department in need of a material will create a reservation with a particular movement type (typically 201 but some use customized as well). Referencing the reservation, the stores department issues the required material to the concerned department.
Businesses however, may not find the process completely adequate. Consider the following case, a user department requires a material of certain quantity. He will need to put up the requirement for approval with his immediate manager or to the head of the department. Once approved, he may proceed further with the reservation. This is similar to the way a Purchase Requisition (PR) is processed. A PR is created when there a requirement of a material of which stock is not available in inventory or a completely new material is required. The PR needs to go through an approval process which is mapped in SAP as Release procedure. Rarely, may be for materials belonging to C category, a release procedure is not required for PR approval.
Standard SAP does not provide release procedure for reservation. A customised dashboard can be created of a release process for reservation. The Reservation BADI will also be used to create a flag indicator which will enable to differentiate a released reservation from an unreleased one. The approval may be single or multiple depending on the client requirement.
A similar setup can be made in case of issue of goods in case the Stores department also follow the above work process. This will require the usage MIGO BADI. It may be argued that such complexity is not suitable for all businesses, and a fair amount of abap development will be required to achieve this, but a lot of companies do use this process. Some may not require the approval steps to be included in SAP and go with emails or other communication in tracking the approval and create reservation in SAP only once it gets a go ahead.
