Supplier is receiving the following error when punching into our buying site from their Supplier Ariba Network account. How can we correct it?

Error: Your user account on the customer's punchin site is pending approval. Try again later.

Following are the steps that Buyers can take to mitigate the error:

1. Buyer must approve the user profile request that was created for the supplier users. You can identify those user profile request from your My To Do portlet, if you have an approval process for user profile documents. Or you can also search for them from the user interface by mentioning the name of the supplier in the Title search filter and approve it.
2. To see if the supplier user is created in Buying Application and if the shared user is active for the same, go to Manage > Core Administration > User Manager > Users > Add/Remove Search Filters > Uncheck Type > OK. Click Either on Active search filter. Search with supplier's name in Business Email Address search filter. This will list the supplier users present in the Buying Application for that supplier. See if the user is active. If not, activate the user by clicking on Activate option under Actions button.
3. To see if the partitioned user is active for the supplier user, go to Manage > Core Administration > User Manager > Users > Other User Info and search with the UserID of the user obtained from the step 2. If no search results, it means the  partitioned user is inactive. To activate the same, make use of Import User Data consolidated file task and import the user.
4. To see if the supplier user is associated with right groups, go to Manage > Core Administration > User Manager > Users > Search for the user > Click on the UserID > Click Groups tab. Ensure the supplier user has groups like External and Supplier Invoice Entry User assigned to them. If not, assign the same to the user by editing the user and clicking on Add/Remove button in the Groups Tab and Save it. 

Following are the reasons on why this error can occur:

• The first time supplier attempts to access your buyer site, such as to create a contract invoice, or to respond to a collaboration request, a user profile generates in SAP Ariba Buying Solution. When this user profile request is not approved by Buyer.
• Either shared user or partitioned user is inactive for the supplier user.
• The supplier user is created in Buyer application but not assigned with appropriate user groups.

SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing
SAP Ariba Buying