Describing the Revenue Sharing & Partner Settlement Customizing

The basis for partner settlement are the customer items and the partner items linked to them. The customer items are viewed as primary items and partner items as secondary items; partner items contain a reference to the customer items that they belong to.

You need the following interface components in order to use partner settlement.

Activate in Customer Billable Item Class:

1. In the billable item class of the customer, the interface component Partner Settlement: Basic Data of Customer Item (CUST_ITEM). This interface includes the field Partner Settlement Category.

2. The interface component Primary Items links Customer BIT with Partner CIT.

3. The interface Partner Settlement of Royalities (Example) are optional fields for a template Partner process.

4. The interface Partner Settlement for Service Number (Example) are optional fields for a template Partner process.

Activate in Partner Consumption Item Class:

1. The Interface secondary links the partner consumption Item with the customer billable item.

2. If you do Rating and Charging in Convergent Charging: In the consumption item class of the partner, the interface component Partner Settlement: Basic Data of Partner Item (PARTNER_ITEM). In this interface component the fields relevant for the access determination in the partner CIT are provided: ACCESS_USERID and ACCESS_SERVICEID.

Activate in Partner Billable Item Class:

1. The Interface secondary links the partner consumption Item are linked with the billable items.

2. In the billable item class of the partner, the interface component Partner Settlement: Basic Data of Partner Item (PARTNER_ITEM) includes the field Partner Settlement Rule and Adjustment Amount for Partner Settlement.

3. Two more interface are delivered as templates.

If you activate these interface components, the system automatically adds the necessary fields to the structures of customer and partner items.

You can define keys for Partner Settlement Categories in Customizing to suit your requirements: Financial Accounting → Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable → Convergent Invoicing → Partner Settlement → Define Categories of Transactions to Be Billed.

Additionally one or more Reasons for Partner Settlement have to be assigned to each partner settlement category.

These reasons are created in Customizing, where also a function module is assigned to each reason: Financial Accounting → Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable → Convergent Invoicing → Partner Settlement → Define Reasons for Partner Settlement.

The function module decides if a partner CIT is to be created and how the main characteristics of this item are populated (Determine the "Access"): In order to rate a partner CIT SAP Convergent Charging has to determine the partner agreement the consumption items belongs to. Therefore a consumer ID (or partner ID or access-user ID) and a service ID have to be set in the partner CIT.This procedure is technically equivalent to the rating and charging of end customers where for instance the telephone number of the caller is used as the consumer ID and the service ID of the consumption item is a category such as SMS or VOICE.

Once categories and reasons are defined, you assign them in an assignment table. With this assignment, one or more reasons can be considered for one Partner Settlement Category. This means that from one customer service usage event one or more different partner shares can be split off.

It is also possible to populate additional fields in the partner consumption item as needed. For instance, many price models require that the amount charged to the end customer has to be adopted as information in the Consumption Item for Partner Settlement. You can adopt further attributes in the Consumption Item for Partner Settlement according to your individual requirements using the new event 0561.

It can be the case that you use your own program logic for generating consumption items for partner settlement and are not able to use the described examples for your processes. In that case, you can implement a customer-specific function module that you can register for the new event 0560. In that case, using the Partner Settlement Category as the starting point is optional.

An adjustment trigger is only created if the open item (overdue, written-off, contained in a payment agreement) contains value 'A' in the Status of Partner Settlement Using Billable Items field, which means that third-party revenue sharing is possible and adjustments are allowed. For open items to be written-off, a trigger is generated in any case (if partner adjustments are generally allowed). For overdue items currently in dunning a customizing setting decides if and in what timely horizon (the minimum number of days that an open item has to be overdue) an overdue item can be subject to partner adjustments. Finally, open items that are part of a payment agreement are not assessed as being in default if the indicator Ignore Installment Plan and / or Ignore Promise to Pay is set in customizing. In that case no trigger is created for such items.

The IMG activity for these partner adjustment specifications is under Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable → Convergent Invoicing → Partner Settlement → Make Specifications for Adjustment of Partner Settlement.