Expense types disappear after save causing report to be 0

[Former Member]

Hello,  I have an unusual issue that I cannot explain to users.   An employee creates an expense report in PR05.  They add the needed expense types and dollar amounts.   They save the expense report, approve and settle it.   They go back the next day to see if it has transferred to FI.  It has but the expense report is empty.  0.00 transferred to FI and there are no expense types or amounts in the report.

Note that this has happened to three different people in the last month.  One of them is very experienced in creating expense reports so I'm sure it was saved, approved, etc, correctly.

We are on ECC6 and just upgraded to EHP6.  I can't find any related OSS notes.

Any suggestions on why this is occuring?

Many thanks for any help.

Cheryl

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Hi Cheryl,

• With "empty" do you mean the receipts have been deleted? Or is the trip gone entirely?
• Are you using any BADIs or other enhancement approaches within the process of saving the expense report and transfering to FI that could cuase this?
• Can you reproduce this behaviour on DEV System?

Cheers, Lukas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Lukas,  the receipts are deleted.  The trip is there with no items in it and it posts to FI for $0.00.   Right now I can't even reproduce it in production.   It's only happened 3 times that I know of.   I'm not sure about the BADI's.  I'll look into that.   It's just strange - this only started after we did EHP6 upgrade in November.

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Hi Cheryl,

I think the only qualified way is recreating the use cases where this happened in production on your DEV system ( i.e. Master data of the PERNR, respective timeline intervals of the request/plan/trip, etc. )  and then debug at some points where you manipulate travel data (BADIs, modifications etc.). Debugging on production as a last resort won't help much since you said it only happens occasionally and not always 😕

Conceptionally, I would always pack all my enhancements which the entire process "could theoretically live without" into one dedicated package and attach it to a switch which you then publish in the switch framework. I do it that way, so when I observe a strange system behaviour, either after SP patches or even minor release changes like upgrading an to a higher enhancement package level, the first thing I do is switch off my enhancement to see whether the system behaviour is "my fault" or not. IMHO this saves loads of time (and nerves )

Cheers, Lukas

[former_member131723 · Accepted solution]

Hi Cheryl

As an outside guess, Is it possible that the trip might have been ammended afterwards but then the changes rejected by the approver? If the workflow customizing is such that the workflow goes as cancellation on rejection by the approver then it can have the effect that the previous posting is reversed and canceled in FI. You could see if this is the case by looking at the AEND table as part of transaction PRTE for this trip and see what status the trip had?

You can check the status as below for settlement and see was it at some point cancelled?

Hope its of some help

Sally

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks.   I'm getting an authorization error on PRTE.  Once I have that corrected then I will check AEND.   I checked the expense history but no indication there.  

Once I can check PRTE I will let you know.  

Many thanks again!

[former_member131723 · Accepted solution]

No problem Cheryl, if I'm right I had another customer with the same problem recently and it just means you need to adjust the workflow so can outline that for you.

All the best

Sally

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Sally - you are exactly correct.  The entry in PRTE/AEND looks exactly like the one you showed.  The question is, how did it get this way?  Did the user manually cancel somehow?   We don't have an approval process.  The user creates the expense report, they approve their own report and they settle their own report.  

Our tracking is in the printed copy which is sent to accounting. 

I tried to recreate what they did but I couldn't figure it out.    Do you know how the user might have cancelled their expense statement?   

Many thanks!

Cheryl