Performing Resource-Related Billing

There are several differences between resource-related billing and sales pricing, including the following:

• In this case, the SD follow-up document is a billing request or credit memo, not a quotation.

• In resource-related billing, sources for dynamic line items include actual data, such as actual costs, payment data, or posted statistical key figures. For sales pricing, you use planned data as a source for dynamic line items. Line items are normally used for resource-related billing. Total records are used for sales pricing.

• As of SAP ERP 4.70, you can evaluate the document flow of billed resources/expenses for a customer order, service order, contract, or project using a new program. The program displays the billed, rejected, and open resources/expenses in a structure overview similar to the expenditure view in resource-related billing. You can change the structure interactively. The billing requests are listed in detail for each resource item. You can navigate to the billing request directly from the result overview. Many other functions, such as filtering, enable you to make a flexible evaluation. You can evaluate the document flow using transactions DP99A, DP99B, and DP99C. These transactions differ only in their selection options.

During billing, the system generates dynamic items from expense information (for example, costs for material and personnel). Before you create a billing request, a modifiable overview screen appears, which is used to determine the appearance of the billing request. You can use this screen to simulate prices or save the screen itself. You can determine the data that the system copies to the billing request after you finish working with the overview screen.

If you do not want to bill a customer for a dynamic item, you can enter an apportionment reason (for example, warranty) in the overview screen for dynamic items. The apportionment reason is used only for internal purposes, such as calculating profits.

Follow the same procedure when creating a quotation from a service order.

With the introduction of SAP HANA as a new in-memory database, new reporting and calculation options are available in the Project System. The new transactions are using the accelerated selection of the SAP HANA database that uses the column storage in such a way that only certain columns of the data are read from the database and used. In general, all fields that you do not select are summarized.

Performance improvement for resource-related billing is achieved by using an optimized select query that fetches the aggregated data from the database directly. Data is aggregated specific to the source Actual Cost — Line Items. The number of records sent for the creation of dynamic items is considerably reduced, and selecting only limited fields from the database helps improve performance. Because only limited fields in the DIP profile are selected, reading of cost records is accelerated. Post optimization, data is fetched only from the selected fields, thereby enabling reduced transfer of data from the database.

You must implement a BAdI to support optimization for resource-related billing.

You can use this BAdI to decide whether an optimized code needs to be run for a particular DIP profile. Additionally, you can use this BAdI to specify additional fields that need to be fetched from the COVP table. This is applicable only for fields that require data from the COVP table, which serves as input for further processing.

The following steps correspond to the process depicted in the Alternative Method for Billing Between Companies figure:

1. The supplying company code creates an internal sales order once, or once a year, for example, in which the internal customer represents the requesting company code.

2. The requesting company code creates a project with its (external) customer. Contract agreements in the form of a real sales order lay with the requesting company code.

3. An employee from the supplying company code provides services for the project and reports his or her time and travel expenses directly. The employee posts actual costs in the requesting company code to the project, though the employee did not create any expenditures for the requesting company code because, for example, travel expenses are refunded by the supplying company code.

4. The function for billing between company codes reads exactly the time and travel expense confirmations (and also external invoices, for example) that exceed the boundaries between the supplying and requesting company code. The system processes line items in resource-related billing, for example, which are summarized dynamically, structured, and evaluated. The system generates an internal billing request.

5. The internal billing document is created based on the internal billing request in the supplying company code (step 5a) and sent (optional) to the requesting company code using SAP Electronic Data Interchange (SAP-EDI). There, the system posts the incoming invoice in FI (step 5b).

   1. In this way, internal revenues are posted on the side of the supplying company code. These internal revenues balance the employee’s travel expenses in this company code. As a rule, revenue surplus is attained, which balances out the fact that the supplying company code did not use its employees for a single customer project.

   2. Internal expenditures are posted on the side of the requesting company code. Account assignment in CO is superfluous, as a rule, since the actual costs were already account assigned in step 3.

6. The requesting company code creates a customer billing document and revenues for services that were provided by the employee from the supplying company code. The requesting company code does not wait for the incoming invoice (step 5b), but rather creates its billing document immediately after time or travel expenses are entered by the employee (step 3). The requesting company code hereby creates external revenues. A portion of these revenues must be used to compensate the internal expenditures from step 5b.

To use resource-related billing between company codes, you must adjust the DIP profile. Ensure that the Intercompany Line Items are selected as a source for dynamic items of the DIP.

The following table shows which business processes are affected by the new function. The business process is depicted in the billing plan as follows:

• When you define the date type, you define whether the date is a down payment date or planned billing date.

• If necessary, enter a billing document value for this date.

It is also possible to specify a billing document value in a billing plan date for all business processes. The system transfers this value as the header condition in the document to be created. This action then causes the system to bill for the billing document value.

In this Customizing activity, enter the DIP profile you want to use for the integration of the billing plan with resource-related billing.

To activate billing plans for resource-related billing, perform the following steps:

1. Set the Billing Plan Active indicator for the required profiles.

2. If you want to implement down payment requests, enter a corresponding sales document type for the down payment requirement under SDT DPReq.

3. Alternatively, you can enter sales document types under SlsTypMstB and CMR SDT MB. When you do this, the system uses these document types instead of the sales document type you entered under Maintain Profiles for Quotation and Billing when you created the debit memo request or credit memo request.