Introducing Master Data Groups

With the new collections management, the dunning grouping indicator on contract account level is not used. Instead, an explicit grouping of contract accounts and/or contract objects is available.

Grouping can take place on two levels: on contract account level or on contract level. With this concept, you can dun all contract accounts of a business partner together (that is, dunning on business partner level) or you can define any group you need. If a contract account is to be treated on its own, you don't have to assign it to a group.

Per master data group, you have to define the collection strategy and the contact person.

Groups of contracts can be defined across contract accounts.

You maintain master data groups with transaction FPCG (FPCGA for display only).

In CAA2/3, the fields groups, strategy, and contract person will be displayed, maintenance is done only via FPCG.

You are able to navigate from the contract account maintenance transactions into the maintenance of master data groups. Unit 6: Dunning and Collection 112

The level of grouping is set at company code level.

Setting the grouping level switches the new collections management on.

If no grouping level is set, postings with the respective company code will be treated by dunning procedures.

If you have a mixture (that is, some company codes to be handled by classical dunning and others by the new collections management), you have to make sure that you make settings for both ways of handling on contract account/contract levels (that is, maintain dunning grouping plus dunning procedure and master data group for collections/collection strategy).

Under Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable → Business Transactions → Dunning → Dunning by Collection Strategy → Master Data Grouping in the IMG, the respective settings for master data grouping can be made.

For each master data group that you create, you have to indicate whether it is used for grouping of contract accounts or contracts (where available).

These master data groups are then available in transaction FPCG.

You may want to specify that only certain contract account categories are grouped together.

In that case, you need to set the respective indicator and make additional settings with regards to the contract account categories.

If you have marked for a master data group that you want to control that only certain contract account categories are grouped together, you need to make the respective entries here.

The RFKK_UPDATE_MASTERDATA report makes the initial entries for the master data group, strategy, and the contact persons for the contract account or contract.

Firstly, all contract accounts for the selected business partner are determined. If company codes that group at contract level are involved, event 1040 is processed to determine the contracts of a business partner.

The required values for the fields above are determined via events 1044 and 1045. The data is then stored in the corresponding master data objects.

In posting area 0400, you define default values for the collection strategy and collection unit.

You can use the following contract account attributes to determine the default values:

• Company code group
• Standard company code
• Contract account category
• Dunning procedure
• Dunning grouping

Using the dunning procedure attribute, you can control whether the default values are to be used for a migration of existing contract accounts (with a defined dunning procedure) or as initial values for new contract accounts to be created (dunning procedure is blank).

For the migration, you should run the report RFKK_UPDATE_MASTERDATA. However, you can also do the migration step by step using the Maintenance of Master Data Groups of Business Partners transaction in the SAP menu under Master Data → Business Partner → Data for Collections Management → Maintain Master Data Groups or the dunning run.

This posting area 0400 is used exclusively in event 1044.

To set up (existing) contract accounts for collections management, complete the following steps:

• Run report RFKK_UPDATE_MASTERDATA can make settings based on existing values on contract account
• Define event 1044 used for determination of master data group and collection strategy
• Configure posting area 0400 for default values
• Define event 1045 used for determination of contact person

The maintenance of default values for contract account group and strategy can be found in the IMG. These default values are used in the migration report via event 1044, in transaction FPCG, and in the dunning run directly.