In SAP system, at least one document is recorded for every business transaction and such transaction receive a unique number. These document numbers can be assigned by the system or by user while entering a transaction to sap. In certain situations even sap creates more than one document. For example; when goods arrive from a vendor two documents are created. One for material which is created to record data that is important for inventory management and the other one is accounting to track financial relevant information.
Document number range will assign a unique number to each transaction that is posted into sap based on the assignment that is defined for it. In this article we will look into the importance of document number range for posting a transaction.
Audit and Document number range in SAP
At the year end external auditors will be auditing the books of accounts maintained by the management. Auditors require each and every transaction to have its audit trail from its starting point to the end. Audit trails of a particular transaction can be traced with the help of a number. For this reason most of the businesses are assigning it internally within the system so that numbers will not be tampered manually.
Document reversal in SAP
In business you may require to reverse a particular transaction that is entered wrongly or by mistakenly posted. To reverse a particular transaction you will require its number and everything related to the documents will be linked to it. After reversal you can track both transactions with its numbers as they will have different numbers and linked to each other.
Number ranges are assigned to document type so that it can be assigned when a particular transaction is created with it. In sap, you can also assign one number range to more than one document type. Without these it will be very difficult to track business transactions.