After you finish all configurations for a workflow and activate it, the workflow can either work as you expect, or might fail for various reasons. To diagnose possible issues, look at the workflow status returned after you submit a general journal entry in the Verify General Journal Entries - For Requester app.
As a requester, you submit a journal entry for the system to check and trigger a workflow that matches your journal entry. As a result, you will see one or more of the following statuses in the worklist. The status tells you whether your journal entry has successfully entered the verification process.
| Status |
| Description |
| Failed |
| Errors occurred when the system tried to post the approved journal entry. |
| Rejected |
| The journal entry has been rejected by the processor. |
| Deleted |
| The journal entry has been deleted by the requester. |
| Submitted |
| The journal entry has been submitted but not approved yet. |
| Workflow Pending |
| Waiting |
| The processor has suspended the journal entry. |
Most requesters will aim for the Submitted status, as the next step is just to wait for a notification from the approver, but pending or negative statuses may also appear. This blog post explains what the other statuses mean and what to do with the journal entries or the verification workflow.
Status: Failed
The Failed status indicates errors in the configuration. The errors can be various, but the top 3 are:
When you see the Failed status, you can choose the journal entry number in the worklist and navigate to the Display General Journal Entries page. In the lower left corner of the page, you can see a blue button with more details.
The workflow is working well, and your journal entry was received by the processor. However, the journal entry was rejected by the processor for some reason. You need to edit the journal entry and re-submit it for verification, which means it will go through the same workflow again. You can also choose to delete the journal entry.
Status: Deleted
This status is based on conditions. If an item has the status Rejected, Workflow Pending or Failed, you might want to delete it from the requester’s worklist. To do this, you navigate to the Post General Journal Entries for Verification page by clicking the journal entry number, edit the journal entry, and then delete it. When you go back to the requester’s worklist, the status turns to Deleted.
Status: Submitted
This status shows you have successfully submitted the journal entry, and you are waiting for the processor to take the next action. Please note that it is impossible for a processor to view a journal entry submitted by themselves in their inbox when they're assigned as the only approver. In this case, the processor will not receive a notification. This is a key reason why it is recommended to assign at least two processors for journal entry verification.
Status: Workflow Pending
You normally see this status immediately after you activate a workflow. In rare cases, the system needs a few minutes to trigger a workflow for the journal entry in the background. If the status does not change to Workflow Pending within 10 minutes or so, it could be that the workflow isn’t properly configured. It might happen that none of the workflows is activated when the system finishes checking all of them. To avoid the Workflow Pending status, create a workflow with empty start conditions and place the workflow at the end of the order list. This way, the workflow can always be triggered, even if the rest of the workflows fail to meet the trigger conditions.
Status: Waiting
This status shows that the workflow for the journal entry works well, but the verifier chooses to suspend this journal entry. You can try to contact the verifier to figure out why.
For more information about the journal entry verification workflow, please refer to the topics on the SAP Help Portal:
• Verify General Journal Entries for Requester: https://help.sap.com/viewer/0fa84c9d9c634132b7c4abb9ffdd8f06/latest/en-US/6b33e9e760b840098d4c66f491...
• Workflow of General Journal Entry Verification: https://help.sap.com/viewer/0fa84c9d9c634132b7c4abb9ffdd8f06/latest/en-US/f93a8ef54de144c8befe6eb646...
• Define Workflows: https://help.sap.com/viewer/0fa84c9d9c634132b7c4abb9ffdd8f06/latest/en-US/1f5b2ccb57224ed98e27f10ee2...
- SAP Managed Tags:
