How to make sure what material number format is the same in SRM and R/3?

Question

Hi all!
I faced the following problem:
"Product does not exist in plant or it has been flagged for deletion". This error message occurs during shopping cart creation or during transferring purchase requisition from R/3 to SRM. It seems like SRM carries out some material checking in R/3 before shopping cart save and can't find out appropriate R/3 material. The only reason I can assume is different material number formats in SRM and R/3. Material number length is the same in both systems.
Thanks in advance,
Alexander.

Answer 1

Alex-
We experienced this problem just recently.  Our situation involved trying to add a material to the cart from an internal catalog (CCM).  As mentioned earlier their is a configuration setting to indicate the number of characters the "Product" (SRM terminolgoy) or "Material" (R/3 terminology) should be.  We made our setting 18 characters (same length as field in R/3).  The important thing to understand is that the material number is actually defined as a character field, not a numerical field so the length of the material "number" is critical for the system to accurately check the material.  Do the following and see if you correct the error.
1)  Go into transaction COMMPR01 in SRM, select the search tab and choose Material in the Find box, then click start.  Choose the material you are experiencing the problem on and verify that the number of characters is the same in SRM as it is in R/3.
2)  Next, go into R/3 and look at table entries in MARC for the material.  This will show you all the different plants associated with the material.
3)  Finally, create a cart and procure the material.  If you get the error message go to the basic data of the cart and verify the location (plant) is one of the plants you found in step 2.  If not, change the location to one from step 2 and check the cart.