What are status of background jobs in SAP

Possible status of background jobs

1. Scheduled:- You have defined the program name and variant  but not defined start condition like Start Date, End Date , Frequency etc. That means you have not defined when job should be scheduled in system.
   
2. Released:- All required criteria are fulfilled for job definition. Start condition is must for the job to be in release status.
   
3. Ready:- All the required conditions are met to run the job in a background workprocess. But job scheduler has put the job in the queue because it is waiting for background workprocess to be free.
   
4. Active:- Job has started running in the background. We cannot change the status of the job once it is  in Active status.
5. Finished:- Job is executed successfully. It means desired task is competed without any error.
6. Cancelled:- There are two possibilities for this. Administrator has forcefully cancelled the job or there might be some issue with job. You can investigate this from Job logs.