I’m pulling another post out of my archives. Today I wanted to talk about the serial numbers, but today I want to focus on the system status’ you will encounter and what they mean to you. Like everything in SAP, there are a lot of possible status’ out there, but I’m going to concentrate on the common ones you will see, and the some of the headaches you may encounter because of them. Here’s the most common equipment status you’ll encounter:
AVLB: This is the easiest one to deal with, but the least informative. This status is pretty much the same as saying I exist, but I don’t know where. If you have the status AVLB, then you use it in scenarios from or to the customer. Typically this status is assigned if you manually (or in mass) create the equipment record and it hasn’t been assigned to anything yet.
ECUS: This means that the equipment is at the customer. If this status has been assigned, then you won’t be able to use it for outbound deliveries, or material movements (at least if you have stock checking turned on). The only thing you can do with this status is an inbound delivery or Lock it. You may also see this status combined with EDEL (which means that it is customer owned and on a delivery).
ESTO: This means that the equipment is in stock at your facility. it could be any plant or location, but it is now in stock, and you can no longer perform an inbound delivery, but you can do material movements on the serial number and you can do an outbound delivery.
EDEL: This means that it is on a delivery. If you have an open delivery that has not been PGI’d or PGR’d, then you will see this status with either ECUS or ESTO (which will tell you if it’s an inbound or outbound delivery). This can be a particularly nasty status. I’ve seen many instances where deletion of a delivery does not always reset this status. (Next post I’ll talk about how to fix things that get messed up).
ELOK: This is the same as marking the equipment for deletion. Once you set this status you can’t do anything with the serial number. If you need it, you can unlock it again, but as long as this status exist, the serial might as well NOT exist =)
I hope this helps explain the status’ a little better on the equipment.
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike