Chris now wants to learn how to define the posting parameters and how to utilize them in a contract. This will help him to establish the links between contract management in Real Estate Management and finance.
Within a contract, on the Posting Parameters tab, you will define time-dependent terms for the following:
- Posting
- Frequency
- Organizational assignments
You can define terms, such as posting rules and frequency of postings so that you don’t have to create them multiple times for each individual condition. Terms can be defined for the following:
- Postings (for example, payment method, bank details, tax rate, and so on).
- Frequency (for example, data for the due date of the assigned conditions).
- Organizational assignment (for example, profit center or business area).
The system creates these posting parameter terms automatically when creating a contract. These terms are then created with a key. The names of such automatically created terms can be defined in the Customizing settings.
For every term category (posting, frequency, organizational assignments), a standard term is proposed, in contract processing, automatically. You can recognize these standard terms by the empty term number.
You can change these standard terms, but the term cannot be deleted from the table. The conditions are automatically assigned and are noted in the Conditions sub-tab. From the Conditions sub-tab, you can also reach the terms, if you want to maintain them.
Choose Create Term to create different terms for each standard term. These different terms are numbered and can be modified and deleted. Assign a fitting title to different terms, if necessary. In the case of different terms, the relevance for term conditions must be manually assigned.
Choose New Date to create time-dependent changes for the standard and user-defined terms. This means, for example, that if the payment method changes, you do not have to create a new posting term. Instead, you enter the time-dependent changes to the data in the existing term. This applies to both standard and non-standard terms.
The posting terms are located in the Posting Parameters tab of the contract and include information about posting-relevant contract data.
You can find the following data in the posting terms:
- Payment data (payment method, payment terms, payment block).
- Dunning data (dunning area, dunning block).
- SEPA mandate (for debit contracts).
- Bank data (bank details, house bank, and note to payee).
- Account determination value (if defined).
- Tax data (tax type and tax group).
- Assigned to the posting term contract partner.
Tax information (tax type and tax group) can be predefined for each contract type in the Customizing settings.
You can assign several time-dependent posting terms to a contract.
Example: A contract contains two posting rules with different payment methods. Here you would create two posting terms: one for the collection payment method and another for the cash payment method.
The term will be assigned to the relevant condition types.
Frequency terms are located in the Posting Parameters tab of the contract as well. There are also posting-relevant data within the frequency terms (e.g. frequency payment forms [in months or years]).
You can find the following data in the frequency terms:
- Frequency and frequency unit, specifying, how often the periodic postings take place (e.g. once in a month or once in a year).
- Condition amount reference, specifying how a condition amount should be understood in relation to time (e.g., annual amounts with monthly posting on the condition item).
- Calculation method (30 days for every month or exact days).
- Payment form (in advance, mid-period, in arrears).
- Due date correction rule, defining how the due date is corrected (moved), e.g. 3rd business day in a month, related to the assigned workday calendar.
You can specify templates for frequency terms in the Customizing settings. These templates override the SAP predefined frequency terms.
Like the posting and frequency terms, the organizational assignment terms are also part of the Posting Parameters tab. The information included in the organizational assignment term mostly depends on settings from other SAP components, such as Financials and Controlling. For example, if profit center accounting or business areas are activated in the SAP system, the information about profit centers and business areas must be provided from real estate contracts too. Based on this information, profit center documents, for example, are created during the periodic postings run. It is not possible to use different terms for organizational assignments, whereas standard terms and time dependency can be used.
