Negatives and Zeros in Planning Area

[Former Member]

Dear Experts,

When scheduling forecast in the background, I see the following messages in spool

1) Negative values are not allowed for the forecast key figure

2) Property "Zero Allowed" must be identical for all key figures

I want to know under what conditions will I get such messages and secondly what is the English meaning of these messages.

I tried all combs of checks in Negative not allowed and zero allowed incl. checking all of them as of posting this q.

I don't see any F1 help or log help.

Many Thanks

BORAT

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Borat,

just guessing:

for the first, if I saw this I would check which alerts are defined at the level of the forecasting background activity, but you probably already checked.

for the second, may be you have different settings for the Fcst key figure and the Corrected fcst key figure (the ones you assign in the planning area, together with ex-post etc...). They are related iternally somehow and may be both need to be similar for consistency.

also check there if what you see there goes well with your key figure definitions. In particular, there is a setting for zeros under Basic Settings that may be should be aligned with you allowing zeros or not in your key figures.

good luck. As you see, a lot of "may be" and "should"s, not too helpful.

J.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks James,

I already checked the messages in the bg activity hence the job doesn't FAIL. but the spool is full of reds. I have the same settings for the all planning area forecast key figures but this still happens. Don't know why. Since I am in test system, I tried a dozen experiments but I still see these messages in spool. Ideally Zero allowed I thought made sense in all conditions of system use and abuse and negative not allowed can as well be controlled using non-negativity steps in the macro. The raw data is always positive even the lowest level of aggregation so I am kind of confused.

I also checked the FINAL results in SDP94 but I cant really make out what is wrong because the level of aggregation at which  I am running the forecast seems to have some bearing on this message but again I am not sure.

Thanks for responding as always.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yeah, I thought you would have tried that already. Did you identify one of the cvcs that give the warnings and debugged?

You can perhaps identify by message number from which part of the standard code it is being raised and try identifying the cause from the code, may be without debugging.

Not very exciting, but...

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Just curious... you are doing forecasting on a key figure with zeros allowed? Your dissagregation is depending upon a different key figure with/without zeros allowed?

Did your experiments involved playing with the settings suggested by Sainath?

regards,

J.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi James, Sainath,

Thanks for your valuable responses.

James: yes zero allowed KF is diagg'ed based on another key fig which is also zero allowed. As  mentioned all key figs in PA are zero allowed and negatives not allowed. Such I checked only for all good purposes it may address.

I did check specific CVC and I find some values in history was blank. I have not checked "Adjust corrected history" as I cant unless I used corrected history from planning version. This option exists in interactive mode though. I am not sure what all this complexity means.

Thanks

Borat

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I was wondering whether it made sense to do forecasting on a key figure with zeros allowed in the sense that I don't know whether zeros computed by the system should be zeros or initial values (may be the system does not know either), perhaps this setting makes more sense for manual key figures (overrides, promotions, whatever).

I believe it is not the best ratio to use this setting, it was probably meant for interactive planning. I agree with you however that this should be better documented anyway.

As you are willing to do the testing... did you try to convert manually the empty values in the history key figure to zeros and see whether you got the same warnings?

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I faced the same issue and resolved it after reviewing this post - so thanks all for the inputs.

The conclusion is that all the following key figures should have the same properties in the planning area settings:

a) Sales History (this key figure is read to create statistical forecast)

b) Statistical Forecast (system calculated statistical forecast)

c) Corrected History (system calculated number)

d) Corrected Forecast (system calculated number)

e) Expost Forecast (system calculated number)

We've defined key figures c,d, & e above and store the system calculated values in them by assigning the same in Forecast Settings of planning area)

All these 5 key figures should have exactly same settings in planning area:

'Zero allowed' checked or unchecked for all

'Negative Values are not allowed' checked or unchecked for all

Hope this helps.

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Hiren Patel

[Former Member]

hi borat,

  i think its problem with the keyfigure in planning area, have you checked details planning area tab, did they mention anything , zero values and negative please find them, hope you get resolution.

/n/sapapo/msdp_admin ---> planning area keyfigure tab details, u can  decimal and fixble those stuff.

let me know you got resolution.

thanks,

sainath.ch