Do you have vendors that require payment via direct debiting from your bank account? For many companies, this is common for rent, certain utilities, and insurance. What is your approach for managing this type of activity in SAP?
Previously, I talked about one possible way that you could set up your SAP system to accommodate direct debits via electronic bank statement postings. That scenario was for a regular, recurring date where the direct debit occurs and you have received an invoice.
This week I go over regular direct debits via electronic bank statement postings with a recurring date where you do NOT receive the invoice prior to the direct debit. A good example of this may be rent or lease payments. The agreement is signed for a period of time, and the installments occur based on that agreement.
For our examples, I have used a system that is ECC 6.0 with EHP6. These examples should work on previous releases as well, as this area of functionality is not undergoing any significant changes right now. There are many different ways that this solution could be addressed in SAP, this is simply one possibility.
The baseline assumption for this option is that there is no payment document generated yet for the item.
Regular recurring date where you do NOT receive the invoice prior to the direct debit.
Using search strings as part of electronic bank statement posting, the vendor can directly receive a posting. This posting will create the payment document for the vendor. There are three steps necessary in the system to accomplish this:
Step 1: Set up posting rules that allow posting area 2 (sub ledger) for vendors
Step 2: Find a recognizable pattern on the bank statement for the vendor direct debit
Step 3: Configure a search string to post to the vendor account.
Step 1: Set up posting rules that allow posting area 2 (sub ledger) for vendors
A posting rule must be created in order to determine the appropriate debits and credits for the accounting entry. Here we can set up a posting rule for area 2 to perform a sub ledger posting.
Step 2: Find a recognizable pattern on the bank statement for the vendor direct debit
Step 3: Configure a search string to post to the vendor account.
In this case, we can set up to post to the vendor account directly. Within the search string, set up the text identified in step 2.
There are a couple important elements when setting up the search string:
- Set up to post to the appropriate vendor account by setting up the Account Number to the Computer Manufacturing vendor number.
- Set up a posting rule to be the rule defined in step 1. This will provide the account to be used for the debit on the posting.
Here are the results of the bank statement posting of the search string:
By looking at the vendor line item display, we can see the open payment on the vendor account.
Once the invoice is entered in SAP, it can now be offset against the payment created as part of the bank statement posting.
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