Understanding the Interface Between Sales and Distribution and Financial Accounting

The following figure shows an example of linking to Financial Accounting:

The system sends billing data in invoices, credit memos, and debit memos to Financial Accounting and posts them to the correct accounts.

You can change the following data before an accounting document is created:

• Billing date
• Pricing
• Account determination
• Output determination data

After the billing document has been released to financial accounting.

The figure shows an example of a posting block:

Normally, the system automatically transfers accounting-related data to Financial Accounting.

However, you might not want the data to be transferred automatically for certain billing types. In such cases, you can set a posting block for the billing type concerned.

The system will then generate the accounting documents only after you have released the billing documents.

This allows you to first generate Sales and Distribution billing documents, then print out the billing documents, and finally, transfer them to Financial Accounting.

In this way, you can improve system performance.

The following figure shows an overview of reference numbers in invoice lists:

You must first create billing documents and post them to Financial Accounting before you combine them in an invoice list. The number that was saved as a reference number in copying control is then transferred to Financial Accounting.

When the invoice list is created, the reference number from the invoice list overwrites the reference numbers from the individual billing documents. This enables you to post incoming payments with the invoice list number.

You can differentiate between documents in Financial Accounting by using the document type. The type is stored in the document header.

Until now, the system has given all Sales and Distribution documents the Financial Accounting document type RV.

You can carry out differentiated evaluations in Financial Accounting and control differentiated number assignments by using the Document Type field within the billing document type configuration. This enables you to transfer the document type for each different billing type.

If there is no information in this field, the system will continue to transfer the document type RV to Financial Accounting across the Finance/Controlling (FI/CO) interface.

The relationship between head offices and branches is outlined in the following figure:

When maintaining master data, you can represent the relationship between the head office and its branches.

You can represent this relationship either with the partner functions in Sales and Distribution, or with the Head office field in the accounting segment of the customer master record.

Until now, you had to maintain the accounting segment completely for this function for both customers. If accounting data was missing for the branch, the system could create billing documents for the branch, but could not transfer them to Financial Accounting.

The partner functions in Sales and Distribution vary enormously according to customer requirements. For example, the sold-to party can also function as the ship-to party.

Therefore, customers are asked whether it would be possible to not have to maintain the accounting segment if the branch of a company acted as the sold-to party, and therefore, as a pure Sales and Distribution customer.

You can use the Branch/Head office field in the billing type to control which partner functions in the billing document should be transferred to Financial Accounting. The characteristics of this field then decide whether the sold-to party or the payer should be entered in the KUNNR (customer number) field in the billing header.

If you leave this field blank, the system will ignore any relationship stored in the Financial Accounting Head office field. For all the other settings, the relationship stored in Financial Accounting has priority over the relationship described by the Sales and Distribution partner functions.

In the standard SAP system, cancellations and credit memos are posted on the opposite side of the account as compared to posting receivables to the customer.

Usually, in the totals line for the account Sales is recorded on both account sides. The total is greater than zero but nothing has been sold.

Customer requests that credit memos and cancellations may be posted on the same side as receivables allows for the account to have a zero balance. The totals line in the account can also be zero, in other words, a sale does not take place.

If you wish to do this, you must activate the Negative posting field for the billing types for credit memos and cancellations.

The system transfers this information to Financial Accounting across the FI/CO interface.

This setting only changes the display of open items. It has no effect on the processes in Financial Accounting.