How to Read MD04 in SAP: The Stock/Requirements List Explained

Available quantity goes negative on October 19. The planner calls the supplier in a hurry, and the order she pulls in is not the one causing the problem. She reacted fast; she simply misread the screen. MD04 in SAP, the Stock/Requirements List, lines up stock, requirements and planned receipts for one material in one plant, in date order. Line by line, it recalculates the available quantity: that column tells you whether something will run short, and on which date. The goal here: read a line without getting the date or the quantity wrong, then turn every exception message into a concrete action.

What MD04 is for, and what it does not show

One material, one plant, one timeline

In S/4HANA as in ECC, the MD04 transaction is the output screen of material requirements planning. The planning run (MRP Live, transaction MD01N in S/4HANA) compares what goes out with what comes in and creates procurement proposals. MD04 shows you the result for a single material in a single plant: a list sorted by date where each line is an MRP element, with its quantity and the resulting available quantity.

It sits where two modules meet. On the PP side, you see planned orders, production orders and the dependent requirements they create for components. On the MM side, you see purchase requisitions, purchase orders and stock. Sales orders, which come from SD, appear as requirements. The same screen therefore serves both the production planner and the buyer.

Prerequisites that are often forgotten when “MD04 is empty”: the material needs its MRP views maintained in the material master (MRP type, lot size, MRP controller, safety stock in the MRP 2 view), and the plant must be planned. Without a planning run, MD04 does show stock and requirements, but no proposals and no exception messages, since those are outputs of the run.

A live snapshot, not the result of the last planning run

Every time you open MD04, SAP rereads the material’s MRP elements and recalculates the list. A purchase order entered ten minutes ago shows up, even if no planning run has happened since. Hence the name dynamic list.

What the list does not show: history (it looks forward), stock detail by storage location and stock type (that is the job of MMBE), or several materials at once (that is MD07). If your plant works with MRP areas, results are read per planning scope: before concluding that a material is short, check which MRP area you are looking at.

Opening MD04 and setting up the view

Nothing below changes configuration: these are personal display settings that you can change at any time.

1. 1
   Enter the material and the plant

   Start MD04. On the initial screen, Individual Access tab, enter the Material and the Plant, then confirm. The Collective Access tab lets you start from an MRP controller and get the list of their materials.

2. 2
   Expand the header

   Use Expand Header Details. You get the parameters used to plan the material (MRP type, lot size, lead times, safety stock) without opening the material master.

3. 3
   Choose which date is shown for receipts

   By default, it is the availability date; a button lets you switch to the goods receipt date (GR date). Note which one is active before you read anything.

4. 4
   Filter, or switch to period totals

   If the list is long, use the filters to keep only some elements, or switch to Period Totals, by day, week or month, to see at a glance when the available quantity deteriorates.

5. 5
   Save your preferences

   The Settings button keeps your display preferences (visible columns, layout). They also apply to the MRP list.

Two useful columns are sometimes hidden by default: Start/Release Date and Opening Date. They tell you when a proposal must be released to arrive on time. If you do not see them, add them to the layout.

Reading a line: date, MRP element, quantity, available quantity

Each line of the stock/requirements list reads from left to right: a date, an MRP element (what kind of line it is), the MRP element data (purchase order, order or reservation number), a possible Rescheduling Date, an exception code, the received or required quantity, and finally the available quantity.

Receipts: stock, scheduled receipts, planned orders

Not all receipts carry the same weight. A purchase order or a production order is firm: the planning run no longer changes it. A planned order or a purchase requisition is a proposal: the next run can move it, change it or delete it. Reading MD04 without making that distinction means counting on receipts that may be gone tomorrow morning.

From the magnifying glass of a planned order, you can also convert it on the spot: into a production order for a manufactured material, into a purchase requisition for a purchased one. This is interactive conversion, handy for an urgent case without leaving the list. From there, the purchase requisition follows the standard procurement cycle.

Issues: customer requirements, dependent requirements, reservations

For a component, most issues are dependent requirements. They are created when a planned order for the finished product is created: SAP explodes the bill of materials and places a requirement on each component, on the date the shop floor will need it. The planned order relies on a production version to know which BOM to use. The consequence: an odd dependent requirement in MD04 is rarely fixed in MD04. You need to go back to the finished product’s order, then to its master data.

The available quantity column: where to look first

The Available Qty column gives, line after line, what would be left if everything went to plan. Safety stock is already taken out from the second line: with 40 tonnes in stock and 10 tonnes of safety stock, the list shows 30 tonnes available before any issue. Your reflex: go down the column and spot the first line where the figure turns negative. That date is what matters, not the total at the bottom of the list.

Requirement date or availability date: the classic mix-up

For a receipt, the date shown by default is the availability date: the day the goods can be used, including goods receipt processing time. It is not the day the truck arrives. If you call a supplier with the MD04 date without switching to the goods receipt date, you may be asking them to deliver a day too early or a day too late.

MD04 exception messages: what to do with each alert

An exception message is an alert set by the planning run on a specific element, when a situation needs the planner’s attention. The code appears in the Exception column; double-clicking it shows its text at the bottom of the screen. For rescheduling messages, the date SAP suggests is in the Rescheduling Date column.

Messages are grouped into configurable groups, and their text can be adapted in your company’s customizing: if a text differs in your system, go by the code.

Bring forward, postpone, cancel: the three most frequent actions

Codes 10, 15 and 20 apply to firm receipts: purchase orders, production orders, firmed proposals. It is precisely because they are firm that the planning run does not move them itself. It sets a suggested date and waits for a person to act. On a non-firm proposal, by contrast, the run adjusts date and quantity directly the next time it runs. A 10 or a 15 that comes back every morning on the same purchase order therefore means nobody has dealt with it, not that SAP is wrong.

For the order of processing, one simple rule is enough: first what prevents planning (98, 50), then what is already late (07, 06), next the rescheduling messages (10, 15, 20, 30), and finally the stock level alerts (96, 25). Purely informational messages, such as 01 (Newly created order proposal), usually need no action.

Why MD04 and MD05 do not always show the same messages

Messages are created during the planning run. The MRP list (MD05) freezes them at the time of the run. MD04, on the other hand, recalculates the elements each time it opens, and some messages cannot be generated there, such as those about newly planned elements. Likewise, informational messages and abnormal-end messages are viewed in the collective MRP list (MD06), not in MD07. If the data has changed a lot since the last run, run planning again for the material before deciding on a message.

Walking through a case: from stock gap to decision

A fictional case at the Valencia plant of the Glass+ glass group (plant 1230). Marta Vidal, purchasing key user, opens MD04 for silica, material GP-SILICE, a purchased raw material. It is consumed by the production of float glass GP-FLOAT: each planned order for glass creates a dependent requirement on silica. Safety stock: 10 tonnes. All data is invented for the example.

1. 1
   Spot the first negative available quantity

   Here, -20 tonnes on Oct 19. Careful, safety stock is already deducted: physically, 10 tonnes would be missing, and the other 10 would come out of safety stock. The problem is real, but half as serious as the figure suggests.

2. 2
   Read the messages

   The Oct 23 purchase order carries a 10 with a suggested date of Oct 19. The Nov 9 one carries a 15 with a suggested date of Nov 20. SAP is not asking for a new purchase order: it is asking you to move the two that already exist.

3. 3
   Open the element

   The magnifying glass on the Oct 23 purchase order gives the PO number and the supplier. Switch the display to the goods receipt date before calling, so you talk to the supplier about their delivery day and not about the internal availability date.

4. 4
   Decide

   Marta gets an earlier delivery for the first purchase order and a later one for the second. She changes the dates in both purchase orders. She is the one who acts in the purchase order: MD04 changes nothing on its own.

5. 5
   Check after refreshing

   The recalculated list should no longer show any negative available quantity, and messages 10 and 15 should disappear at the next planning run.

After the decision, the purchase order arrives on Oct 19 and available quantity no longer drops below 5 tonnes. The second purchase order, moved to Nov 20, covers the requirement on the same day without tying up 30 tonnes of silica for eleven days. The mistake avoided is the one from the introduction: chasing the wrong purchase order in a hurry, or creating a third one when two were enough.

MD04 vs MD05, MD07 or MMBE: which screen for which question?

One thing to watch in S/4HANA: MRP Live does not create MRP lists. If all your materials are planned with MRP Live, MD05 has nothing to show you and MD04 becomes your only reference. MD06 plays the same collective role for the MRP list as MD07 does for the stock/requirements list.

In the Fiori launchpad, searching for “Monitor Stock/Requirements List” opens the same list. To manage many materials, the Monitor Material Coverage (Net and Individual Segments) and Manage Material Coverage apps list materials that are short according to a shortage definition and suggest solutions. Finally, to simulate medium-term load rather than read today’s situation, pMRP is the tool to look at.

Reading mistakes that cost a lot

• Reading the wrong date. The availability date is not the delivery date. Switch to the goods receipt date before calling a supplier.
• Reading MD05 while thinking it is MD04. The MRP list is frozen at the last run: a purchase order entered since then is not in it. To make a decision, open MD04.
• Forgetting safety stock. It is deducted from the second line. An available quantity of -5 can mean “I am eating into my safety stock”, not “the line is going to stop”.
• Looking at the wrong scope. With MRP areas, a material can look short in one area while the stock sits in another. Check which one you are reading.
• Mixing up planning and promising. MD04 is for planning procurement. Promising a date to a customer is the job of the availability check (ATP), which follows its own rules.

Explaining MD04 in an interview

The question often comes like this: “How do you know a material is going to run short?”.

You will show you have hands-on practice if you add the difference between the availability date and the goods receipt date. More questions of the same kind are waiting for you in our SAP consultant interview questions.

Frequently asked questions

What to do tomorrow morning

Reading MD04 correctly comes down to a few moves: know which date is displayed, go down the available quantity column to the first negative line, then turn the exception message into an action on a firm receipt. The rest of the screen is there to confirm what those three moves showed you. To place this screen in the whole planning chain, the free SAP Learning course on S/4HANA production planning has a unit on evaluating planning results. In your test system, take a material you know, open its stock/requirements list and look for a 10 or a 15: explain out loud which purchase order should move, and to which date. And if a whole team of planners needs to learn to read this screen the same way, SAP training for your company helps build those reflexes together.

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