Year-End Cumulative Quantity Resets - Why They Break SAP and EDI Alignment

Cumulative quantities (CUMs) are what keep your customer’s planning system and SAP aligned. The customer sends their cumulative received quantity in the SHP segment of the EDI 830, and SAP calculates its own cumulative delivered quantity from goods issues posted to the scheduling agreement. As long as both numbers move together, forecasts and schedules stay in sync.

The problem comes at year end.

Why Year-End Causes Mismatches

Not all customers treat cumulative quantities the same way.

• Some customers reset their cumulative totals to zero in January or at their fiscal year rollover.
• Others never reset cumulative quantities at all.
• SAP, by default, resets cumulative quantities automatically at year end.

If the customer does not reset their CUMs but SAP does, the next inbound DELINS IDoc suddenly shows a large mismatch. From SAP’s perspective, it looks like the customer already received a massive first delivery of the year. This can trigger IDoc errors, block updates to the scheduling agreement, or result in incorrect schedule lines.

What It Looks Like in Practice

Example:

• December: Customer CUM = 52,000, SAP CUM = 52,000
• January: Customer continues calculating to 52,500, SAP resets to 0
• Inbound DELINS compares 52,500 vs. 0
• Result: CUM mismatch error or scheduling agreement corruption

Some customers only reset cumulative quantities for specific materials, or only reset forecast CUMs. That inconsistency makes these issues even harder to detect and troubleshoot.

How to Avoid Year-End Issues

• Confirm your customer’s CUM reset rules, as many never document them clearly.
• Ensure scheduling agreements are correctly configured to reset on the appropriate date.
• Closely monitor inbound 830s in early January for sudden changes in SHP/02 values.
• If alignment is lost, a one-time correction delivery or manual adjustment may be required to realign SAP’s baseline.

Why It Matters

Aligned cumulative quantities keep forecasts accurate, prevent over or under shipping, and avoid costly IDoc failures. Year end is the most common point where that alignment breaks, especially for long-running scheduling agreements.