Reviewing and Approving Staging

Check the imported data, resolve duplicates, approve and transfer it into the item master.

Staging is where you decide what from the delivery actually reaches your master data.

The staging tables

Page	Contents
Article Staging	One record per article, with description, unit, price, groups and duplicate status.
Price Staging	Price records from P and Z records with price indicator and validity date.
Part Lists	Sets from J records with their lines and BOM status.

You reach all three from the import session or through the application search.

Steps

1

Check completeness

Compare the record count on the import session against what you expected. For DATANORM 4 remember: the A and B record of an article make one record. See Duplicates and Validation.

2

Spot-check records

Open individual records and check description, unit, price and product group. Umlauts in the descriptions tell you whether the character set was read correctly.

3

Resolve duplicates

Filter on the status Review. Each record names the reason and the match that was found.

4

Approve

Approve individual records, or use Approve All for every record of the session marked for review. Reject the ones you do not want.

5

Synchronise

Start synchronisation. Items, price list lines and BOMs are created now, and the status changes to Synced.

Key fields in article staging

Field	Meaning
DATANORM Article No.	The supplier's article number.
Description, Description 2	Short text of the article.
Unit of Measure	Unit from the file; translated through the unit mapping.
List Price	Gross price per price indicator 1.
Net Price	Net price per price indicator 2.
Product Group, Discount Group	The article's groups.
EAN/GTIN	Barcode, where delivered.
Vendor No.	Vendor of this import.
Processing Status	New, Review, Approved, Rejected, Synced, Error, Skipped.
Is Duplicate	Flags a detected match.
Duplicate Reason	Plain text explaining why the record counts as a duplicate.
Matched Item No.	The existing item the match points to.
Merged Source Records	Number of file lines the record was built from – typically 2 for V4.
Error Message	Cause, if synchronisation failed.

Decisions on duplicates

Decision	Effect
Skip	The record is not applied; the existing item stays unchanged.
Update	The matched item is overwritten with the new data.
Create New	An additional item is created; the existing one remains.

Update is the right choice for catalogue refreshes from a familiar supplier. Create New is what you need when two suppliers happen to use the same article number.

Reworking errors

A record with status Error names the cause in the Error Message field. Often a posting group or a unit mapping is missing. Fix the cause and synchronise again – there is no need to re-read the file.

See Common Problems.

After synchronisation

Action on the import session	Effect
Write Purchase Price List	Transfers the prices into the vendor's price list.
Show Purchase Price List	Opens the price list that was created.
Build Part Lists	Creates the assembly BOMs for the sets of this import.
Show Part Lists	Shows the sets with their status.