Creating Billing Documents in Various Ways

The following figure illustrates billing on request:

By manually entering the document numbers, you can explicitly specify the transactions that are to be billed. You enter the order number or delivery note number, depending on whether you want to carry out order-related billing or delivery-related billing.

If a billing document cannot be created, for example, because of a billing block, the system will issue an error log.

You can also select individual items or partial quantities of items to be billed when billing deliveries or orders. To do this, you have to choose the Item Selection function in billing. In delivery-related billing, you can only change the item quantities for item categories that have billing relevance K.

You have now seen the following billing options:

• Individual billing documents:

  An individual billing document is created for all documents marked in the billing due list. No combination is carried out. You branch to transaction VF01 for every document selected.

• Collective billing documents:

  All documents marked in the billing due list are billed. The system tries to combine them as much as possible. Processing of the selected documents is carried out in the background. After the documents are processed, you return to the billing due list. Here, icons indicate whether or not a document has been billed successfully.

• Collective billing documents online:

  The system branches to the Create Billing Document function (transaction VF01). The documents are combined as far as possible according to the usual criteria.

You can process the billing due list in simulation mode. The system displays the billing documents without saving the documents. Transactions containing errors are indicated with the corresponding processing status.

You may decide to create invoices using a background job because it is practical and efficient.

You can run the background job automatically in the following ways:

• Periodically (for example, each Monday at 2 a.m.)
• At a specific time (for example, June 19 at 8 p.m.)

The system can divide the billing due list into multiple background jobs and start them simultaneously. In this way, you can make better use of your hardware by operating more than one processor.

If you do not require a log or a detailed list, SAP recommends that you do not select these options on the selection screen. This will improve performance considerably.

You can cancel a collective billing run.

This cancels all the billing documents in a collective run. The canceled billing documents are combined under a collective processing number in collective processing type S and can be displayed by choosing Billing document → Log.

You can then bill the preceding documents for the canceled billing document again.

Only users with the correct authorization can cancel collective runs.

You have additional options for billing when you use the Create Billing Documents - Billing Due List Items and Manage Billing Documents apps.

The following figure outlines these additional options:

Besides the traditional transactional processing for creating a billing document with transactions VF01 and VF04, you have an SAP Fiori app: Create Billing Documents – Billing Due List Items. Within the Create Billing Documents – Billing Due List Items SAP Fiori app, you have more filter and selection options than before. When you use the Create Billing Documents – Billing Due List Items app, you have the option to set the Billing Settings. Here you can decide how the invoicing process is carried out.

You can make billing settings so that the system does the following automatically when you create billing documents:

• Enter billing date and type before billing. If you enable this setting and choose to create billing documents, the system requests a billing date and the required billing type before creating billing documents.
• Create separate billing documents for each item of the billing due list. If you enable this setting and choose to create billing documents, the system creates separate billing documents for each item of the billing due list that you have selected.
• Automatically post billing documents. The system automatically posts all billing documents that you create to accounting and triggers an output (for example, an invoice by e-mail). Note that if you do not choose to automatically post billing documents, you must manually post your billing documents using the Manage Billing Documents app.
• Display billing documents after creation The system generates and displays temporary billing documents for the SD documents that you have selected for billing. You then have the option to save or discard them. Saving converts them to final billing documents, while discarding them returns you to the billing due list.

In the Create Billing Documents — Billing Due List Items app, you can now generate and view temporary billing documents before converting them to final billing documents. If everything you see in the temporary billing document is correct, you can go ahead and create the final billing document in a single step. If you notice an error, you can discard the temporary billing document and start again. This saves you time and effort because you no longer need to cancel billing documents that were created using incorrect information. The feature also reduces sequential discontinuity in the continuum of billing document numbers, meaning that fewer numbers in the billing document number range are wasted.

For the Create Billing Documents — Billing Due List Items app, it is possible to use "custom fields" to filter and sort the billing due list. As a prerequisite, the custom fields must be enabled and implemented in the system (for more details please refer to SAP help: Process Extensibility for Sales Documents and Billing Documents).

Additionally, there is the SAP Fiori App Manage Billing Documents to review the billing documents. With this app, you can manage invoices, invoice cancellations, credit memos, and other billing documents. This includes displaying, editing, posting, and canceling billing documents. You can also generate PDF-based print previews of billing documents.

You can select multiple billing documents to display them simultaneously. In this case, the system enables you to quickly navigate between the selected billing documents. Once a billing document is displayed, you can view and change information. To display a summary of a billing document's details, choose its document number in the list. This will display the corresponding billing document object page.