Introduction
Customer receivables are checked for correctness during year-end closing in cooperation with internal or external auditors.
Carla received the following mail from Jennifer, internal auditing department:
Customer Balance Confirmation
Carla has some questions for Jennifer because she's doing this task for the first time, so she calls her.
Carla: Hi Jennifer! Thank you for offering to help me. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.
Jennifer: No worries! How can I help?
Carla: What's the difference between a balance confirmation and a balance request?
Jennifer: With a balance confirmation, we tell the customer how much they owe us and ask for a response. With a balance request, we ask the customer to tell us how much they owe.
Carla: And why did we change the procedure this year?
Jennifer: We changed things because not enough customers responded to balance requests. Hopefully, the ratio will increase again this year.
Carla: Good to know.
Jennifer: Oh! Also, balance notification is another option where the customers only reply if they disagree with the balance.
Carla: Thanks for letting me know!
Jennifer: No worries - we were all new once. By the way, could you check if our current reply address is correct? We moved to the company campus last year, so we should double-check our details.
Carla: Yes, of course. Everything looks good on my side. So, how do we create a new business partner for another reply address?
Jennifer: Good question. Create a new business partner with the business partner categories Organization or Group.
Carla: Thanks, Jennifer. I will let you know when I schedule the Balance Confirmation in the SAP system.
Jennifer: Perfect. If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out!
Carla's Summary:
There are three ways to send letters:
- Balance Confirmation: Ask for confirmation of specific amounts and a reply, irrespective of whether the amounts correspond.
- Balance Notification: Tell the customers the amounts to be confirmed. Keep in mind that they only reply if they disagree with the balance.
- Balance Request: Ask the customer for the amount in our account.
To reconcile our accounts, we contact customers to fix any mistakes.
In SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, the reply address must be a business partner of the category Organization or Group. To create the letters, use the Customer Balance Confirmation job template in the Schedule Accounts Receivable Jobs Fiori app.
Additional Information
In SAP S/4HANA, set the reply address in customizing when using the Create Balance Confirmation – For Customers app.