Purchase Requisition Stuck, No Automatic PO Created

The requester says the purchase order was never sent to the vendor even though the requisition was approved days ago. The buyer says the requisition is sitting in their list and nothing happened overnight even though the automatic conversion job is supposed to run every night. Sometimes the complaint is the opposite: a requisition for a service or a non-stock item was expected to require manual buyer judgement, and the business is confused about why it did not convert on its own, which usually means expectations about which requisitions are eligible for automatic conversion were never set correctly. In both cases the requisition itself looks fine on screen, has a valid quantity and delivery date, and shows no obvious error, which is what makes this feel like a system fault rather than a data gap.

Start on the requisition itself in ME53N: open the source of supply tab on the line and check whether a source is assigned and whether it is fixed or open. Check the release status field on the same screen; if release is still pending, conversion will never happen regardless of sourcing. Move to ME01 or the source list display to confirm whether a fixed source exists for that material and plant combination and whether it carries a validity range covering the requisition date. Check the vendor master in XK03 or the purchasing view of the vendor for a purchasing block at the relevant purchasing organisation. If a contract or scheduling agreement is the intended source, check its validity dates and released quantity in ME33K or ME32L. Finally check whether the automatic conversion program actually ran, using the job log in SM37 for the relevant variant, and confirm the variant's plant and purchasing group selection actually includes this requisition.

Pull the requisition list in ME5A for the affected plant or purchasing group filtered to open items with a release indicator complete, then cross-check each against ME01 source list entries for a fixed source and against the vendor purchasing block flag. A requisition showing release complete, a valid fixed source, and no vendor block, yet still unconverted, points at the batch job rather than the master data, and the SM37 job log for that run settles it.

If the source list has no fixed entry, or has a manual-only entry, assigning or correcting the fixed source is a data fix on the source list or info record, not a transport. If the requisition line has the manual source flag set by mistake, correcting the indicator on the requisition and resaving is also data-level, though it must be done before the requisition is fully processed downstream. If the release strategy is genuinely still pending, the fix is approval action, not a technical correction, and escalating to the approver is the right move rather than touching configuration. If a vendor purchasing block is deliberate policy, converting the requisition manually with a different vendor is the correct workaround, not lifting the block. If the exclusion is a configuration decision, such as certain item categories or purchasing groups being excluded from automatic creation by design, changing that scope is a config change requiring a transport and business sign-off, since it changes control behaviour for every requisition in that category going forward, not just this one.

The common reflex is to create the purchase order manually from the requisition using ME21N and consider the incident closed. That clears the immediate backlog but leaves the underlying source list or release condition broken, so the next requisition for the same material and vendor fails the same way. It also quietly overrides whatever control was meant to force manual review, such as a deliberate vendor block, without anyone confirming that override was appropriate.

The purchasing group or buyer owns the source list and release outcome; MM configuration owns the automatic conversion program scope and its exclusions. The handover note should state the requisition number, whether release was complete at the time of the complaint, the source list status for the material and plant, and whether the scheduled conversion job actually ran for that period.