"Error occurred in derivation rule" & "No commitment item entered in item".

Question

Unable to create Purchase Request (PR) and the following error message shows
"Error occurred in derivation rule. See Long Text"
Diagnosis
Fund From Commitment Item
No entry in a derivation rule was found for the specified source fields.
The derivation rule was set up that an error message appears when this happens.
The required derivation rule entry would need the following source fields:
Commitment Item
xxxxxxx
Procedure:
Create an entry in a derivation rule for these source field values.  Make sure that entries exist for all the valid source field values.  If the derivation should not always be carried out, you can also define rule so that no error message appears if a derivation rule entry does not exist.
Can any one help how to find out the root cause of the error and solve this issue
Regards,
GB

Answer 1

I was able to duplicate your error by creating the following.
I went to transaction FMDERIVE and created a derivation rule and named it "Fund From Commitment Item".
On the definition tab, I selected committment item (COMMIT_ITEM) for the source field and the target field selected (FUND).
The condition tab was left blank. NOTE: On the attribute tab I selected the option "Issue Error Warning If No Value Found).
I entered no rule values (F9) within the rule (for example such as commitment item XXXXXXX = fund YYYYY) and saved.
After creating this derivation rule, I get the same error message because there were no values in the derivation rule (the source commitment item used was not found in the rule).
If Fund is a field that is always keyed manually then I would not have such a derivation rule.
But you may have some exceptions (like we do) and in the case of exceptions you can populate the derivation rule with those exceptions... i.e. whenever commitment item XXXX is used then the fund should be equal to YYYY further using your conditions and attributes for your custom needs.