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This page explains invoice blocking tolerances for SAP beginners and project teams. In short, tolerances act as guardrails that stop invoices with unrealistic price differences from slipping into finance unnoticed. It matters because without these limits, your suppliers could accidentally overcharge you or your system could block everything in sight. Use it when your procurement and finance teams need clean, reliable invoice verification, and avoid it when someone confuses tolerance with “let's block everything just to feel safe”.
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Invoice blocking tolerances are SAP’s quiet moral compass during Logistics Invoice Verification. They decide when an invoice looks reasonable and when it looks like trouble. Two big checks do the heavy lifting: price variance and moving average price variance. Both exist to stop the company paying the wrong amount for goods, whether by error, misalignment, or the occasional act of chaos.
Without well judged tolerances, your business swings between two disasters. Too loose, and you overpay without noticing. Too strict, and perfectly valid invoices stack up like planes circling Heathrow with no place to land. Tolerances preserve trust. They keep vendors paid on time and the books clean.
Price variance
The difference between what you expected to pay and what the invoice says.
Think of it as the “Should we be worried?” check.
Moving average price variance
Compares the invoice to the product’s evolving average cost.
Ideal when prices move like the British weather.
Blocking tolerance
The threshold beyond which SAP raises an eyebrow and blocks the invoice for review.