Executing a Payment Run

The payment run uses the data from the payment proposal to perform the following activities:

• Post the payment documents to the general ledger and clear paid open items.
• Post related postings for taxes, discounts, and exchange rate differences.
• Select the payments that can be paid with EDI.
• Supply the Payment media creation and print programs with necessary data.

In the payment run, payment documents are created, open items are cleared, and postings are made to the general and subledgers.

The payment program automatically posts payments and related postings (postings for taxes, discounts, and exchange rate differences).

You can use separate bank subaccounts to post incoming and outgoing payments (such as outgoing checks, outgoing transfers, incoming checks, and transfers received).

• You can reconcile the bank account balance with the corresponding G/L account at any time.
• The subaccounts contain all incoming and outgoing payments until the money is actually debited from or credited to the bank account (value date). The item is then transferred from the subaccount to the bank account. The postings at the bank are usually entered using the manual or electronic bank account statement.

The payment method settings for each country define the document type used for payment documents. For cross-company-code payments, you are required to use another document type for the clearing postings, and define both document types using internal number assignment.

• Documents from the payment run contain the date and identification number (for example, YYYYXXXX-TA##) of the run in the document header text.
• The system calculates the value of the clearing document by adding the number of days until the value date to the posting date. If no entry is made, the system uses the posting date as the value date. The number of days until the value date depends on the payment method, bank account, currency, and the account limit. To calculate the value date of check payments, you enter a check-cashing time in the master data. This takes priority over the days to value date for checks.

The Payment Medium Workbench (PMW) is used to create payment media. The user is provided with a generic payment medium program for all payment medium formats whose variants are to be entered in Customizing. The user can create the structure of the note to payee and choose different notes to payee according to their origin (vendors, customers, personnel, travel expenses, treasury, online payments, and so on). Developers, consultants, and system administrators have simple tools to change delivered formats without modification or setting up new formats. The PMW is integrated with well-known development tools (Data Dictionary, Function Builder, and so on) and the Data Medium Exchange (DME) Engine, which enables the PMW to function like a workbench.

The PMW programs are launched using the PMW payment methods.

• The Payment Medium Workbench is uniform.
• You can easily change formats without making modifications.
• You can create new formats (no programming experience is necessary if you use the DME Engine.
• All the advice notes can be output in one print file.
• PMW has better ways to sort advice notes.
• You can freely define the note to the payee in Customizing.
• You can assign the note to the payee according to the origin and payment method in Customizing.
• The PMW provides improved performance for mass payments.

A payment medium format contains various fields filled with content from your SAP system.

• Using programmed function modules
• Using the DME Engine

The DME Engine enables you to define file formats that meet your bank’s requirements for data medium exchange. This is particularly important, because no international or regional standards are defined. Some countries do not have their own domestic standards, which means the file has to follow the bank's standards. The DME Engine lets you define new formats and change existing formats flexibly and easily, without requiring any ABAP programming knowledge.

By defining the granularity, the payment medium format specifies the definition of the payment medium and determines how the payment media will be output separately in payment groups. A payment group usually corresponds to one payment file.

For example, if the Company Code and the House Bank are selected as the level of granularity, the system creates a payment group for each company code and house bank combination.

You have to define at least one selection variant in the generic payment medium program SAPFPAYM for each payment group. The system processes the payment medium program with all the defined variants.

The granularity can be refined, but not reduced, for the PMW formats shipped with the system. The reason for this is that the granularity SAP ships is based on the format requirements (usually specified by the banks).

The system always assigns a PMW format to a PMW payment method and a content template for the note to the payee.

• Type 1: Invoice information (classic note to the payee)
• Type 2: Internal reference (in case the payment media is returned)
• Type 3: External reference (for the business partner)

The contents of the note to the payee are defined in a content template that is independent of the format, either in Customizing or using a function module. In Customizing, you can define the contents on a language-specific basis to ensure your business partners always receive the text in their own language.

The content template supplies information to the reference fields when the system creates the payment medium.