Posting Open Items in FI-CA and FI-GL Integration

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
  • Understand the lifecycle of a FI-CA document
  • Explain the FI-CA document structure

Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable

Lesson Overview

This lesson provides you with an overview of:

  • How an FI-CA document is structured.

  • How to post, change, and display documents.

  • The link between general ledger and sub-ledger accounting.

  • The account balance display in contract accounts receivable and payable.

Business Example

Customer Bovi has received an invoice from Print Service Corporation.

The business context behind the invoice is that Print Service Corporation has to post the invoice into its sub-ledger for receivables, and on revenue and tax accounts.

The invoice is posted to the chart of accounts for Print Service Corporation. The due amount of the invoice that has to be paid by customer Bovi will be followed as an open item on contract account.

Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable

Example of one general ledger.

The invoice amount is posted as a receivable item on the contract account of customer.

The life cycle of a receivable in contract accounts receivable and payable clearly reflects the processes that are handled in FI-CA:

  • Open items can be posted in invoicing, dunning, or returns processing. Alternatively, they can be posted manually in sub-ledger accounting. The usual form of document posting is posting from an invoice.

  • Items relevant to the general ledger are regularly compressed and transferred to the general ledger.

  • Cleared documents that have expired can be archived.

  • Opened and cleared items can be displayed using the account display function.

The figure illustrates the life cycle of an open item.

Billing and invoicing in convergent invoicing produces the invoice. To understand the necessary delivery structure of the process, we will analyze the FI-CA document structure.

FI-CA Document

The document header contains general data about the FI-CA document such as the document number, document type, document date, posting date, currency, and reconciliation key. Data about the person making entries and the origin is stored in the administrative data of the document header.

Data relevant to posting is stored in the business partner items. This includes data about the partner/contract, general ledger (receivables account), receivables amount, due date, dunning and clearing, cash management and forecast, and other data.

Statistical postings make it easier to deal with uncertain receivables, since these postings are not transferred to the general ledger and, as a result, are easier to reverse if they are not paid.

Typical examples of unpaid amounts include dunning charges or documents from an installment plan, because the underlying source receivables have already been posted in the general ledger.

General Ledger Booking

The system of general ledger booking is built-in customizing of FI-CA with the help of main transactions and sub-transaction. Instead of direct postings to general ledger they can be derived from main transaction and sub-transaction in the following way:

The figure shows the mapping of Main Transactions and Sub-Transactions to General Ledger Accounts.

Depending on organizational unit company code and division and with reference to a chart of accounts Transaction is used as a mapping from products to general ledger accounts.

Mapping in customizing is a mapping table that is called posting area 2610 for revenue and tax. Mapping to general ledger receivable reconciliation account is done in posting area 2611.

Explanation of how Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable are used as a Subledger

FI-CA serves as a sub-ledger as well as an integrator of accounting data that originates (for the most part) from various upstream applications and systems. These applications transfer their posting data to FI-CA for further processing. Instead of posting each document created in the sub-ledger individually to the general ledger and controlling, totals records are transferred (batch processing). Each totals records is posted to the general ledger. This summarization technique greatly reduces the volume of postings in the general ledger and results in a tremendous performance advantage.

Integration with FI General Ledger: Definitions

Reconciliation key:

  • Key under which totals records are listed for transferring the FI-CA documents to the general ledger.

  • Automatic determination in the case of mass postings (such as payment runs)

  • Manual entry in the case of single postings (for example, when posting a document).

  • Default values for individual postings.

Totals records

  • Transfer unit for postings from sub-ledger to general ledger accounting.

  • The documents from sub-ledger accounting are consolidated into totals records.

  • Summarization criteria, and so on.- Posting date- Account assignment data (G/L account, cost center ...)

Explanation of the usage of the Reconciliation key.

A transaction is a combination of main transactions and sub-transactions.

The texts allocated to the main transactions and sub-transactions explain the corresponding business transaction and are available in all correspondence.

The main transaction controls the determination of receivables and payables accounts.

The sub-transaction controls determination of the revenue account, determination of the tax determination code, and information about any additional account assignments (such as business area or CO account assignment data).

FI-CA and industry-specific versions use internal main transactions and sub-transactions that are assigned internally by various business processes and that control these processes. These internal transactions are assigned to the installation-specific transactions.

Posting Areas

Definition of a posting area:

Key representing a business subfunction that supports automatic determination of certain data required to create documents. This data can include account numbers, transactions, and other specifications or defaults used in posting transactions and clearing transactions.

In Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable, Customizing tables are not defined for every posting area. Depending on the posting areas, tables are identified by their key and function fields.

Posting areas can be called using Customizing activities or transaction FQC0.

Posting areas are broken down into the following areas:

  • Posting areas for all application areas (for example, posting area used to identify a tax account based on the tax code).

  • Posting areas for more than one application area (for example, posting area used to determine the default values for incoming payments). You can make a number of different specifications for each application area.

  • Application-specific posting areas prefixed by the letter from the application area.

The active application area is defined in the user parameters or by selecting the application area.

You can maintain posting areas either in transaction FQC0 or in customizing. Transaction FQCR is used to select and output data from account determination.

Explanation, of how the account in general ledger is determined.

General ledger accounts are determined by means of a standard account determination function. This function takes a subset of posting parameters and checks a special allocation table that is set up in FI-CA Customizing.

G/L accounts are determined using main transactions and sub-transactions from the line items of postings and the account determination ID.

Each individual posting in the sub-ledger is allocated to just one receivable/payable account in the general ledger. A negative transfer amount is a credit, and positive amount a debit.

Revenue account: The account determination logic for the profit and loss statement is the same as for balance sheet account determination. A subset of fields is used from the documents to automatically determine the general ledger account to which postings should be made.

Illustration of the determination of the reconciliation account.

The system determines the main transaction during business partner processing, based on the internal transaction and its allocation to a defined transaction.

The account determination ID controls the determination of the receivables account in FI-CA (together with the main transaction resulting from the business transaction). The company code and, potentially, the division are further criteria.

The same receivables account is determined for identical business transactions for contract accounts with the same account determination IDs, such as residential customers or companies connected inland.

You can use different account determination IDs to access different receivables accounts in general ledger accounting.

Illustration of the determination of the sales revenue account.

Sales revenue account determination also requires the sub-transaction.

This enables you to allocate different revenue accounts to one business transaction (main transaction) by defining special sub-transactions. You can also allocate different revenue accounts for each company code and division.

The business area and tax on sales and purchases determination code are defined in revenue account determination. Further account assignment characteristics (such as cost center and profit center) are also stored there using the CO account assignment key.

Illustration of the determination of the tax code.

The determination of the indicator for posting sales tax is connected with the determination of the revenue account for a business transaction.

In table TE011, the valid sales tax code for general ledger accounting is determined historically (that is, the periods for which a tax code is valid are defined) based on the tax determination code identified in revenue account determination.

The tax accounts to be posted are specified in posting area 0010 depending on the company code, sales tax code, and tax transaction.

IMG: Transaction SPRO

Financial Accounting (New) → Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable

→ Organizational Units.

→ Basic Functions → Postings and Documents → Documents → Maintain Document Assignments.

→ Basic Functions → Postings and Documents → Documents → Define Account Assignments for Automatic Postings

→ Basic Functions → Postings and Documents → Documents → Define Account Assignments for Automatic Postings → Automatic G/L Account Determination

Most important customizing activities for account determination.

In the Maintain Transactions for Non-Industry Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable activity, you can define main transactions and sub-transactions, carry out allocations to internal transactions, make cross-industry settings, and add attributes to the transactions.

Create a Posting Document

Business Example

For training purpose, and to have an open item on your contract account for a later task, post an invoice for EUR 10 manually to your contract account CA##, and a EUR 3 dunning charge.

Exercise Options

To perform this exercise, you have two options:

  1. Watch the simulation: to start the simulation, choose Start Exercise in the figure below.
  2. Perform the steps, as described below.
ExerciseStart Exercise

Task 1: Post an Invoice to a Contract Account

Post an invoice for EUR 10 manually to contract account CA##.

Steps

  1. In the SAP Fiori launchpad search section FICA document and information and choose the tile Post document (Corresponding back-end transaction FPE1).

    1. Enter EUR in the Currency field.

    2. Create a reconciliation key, if prompted to do so. The reconciliation key summarizes all general ledger postings.

    3. In the menu, choose Go to → Business partner item list.

    4. Fill in the following fields in one row of the business partner items:

      Item1
      Business PartnerBP##
      Company Code1010
      Net Due DateToday
      Contract AccountCA##
      Main Transaction6000
      Sub-transaction0010 (Invoice)
      Amount10

    5. Leave the Contract column empty.

    6. Save your entry.

    7. Result: The system outputs the message Document posted under the number: _________________

Task 2: Post a Dunning Charge to a Contract Account

Post a dunning charge of EUR 3 manually to contract account CA##.

Steps

  1. In the Fiori launchpad search section FICA document and information and choose the tile Post document (Corresponding back-end transaction FPE1).

    1. Create a reconciliation key, if prompted to do so. The reconciliation key summarizes all general ledger postings.

    2. In the menu, choose Go to → Business partner item list

    Fill in the following fields in one row of the business partner items:

    Item1
    Business PartnerBP##
    Company Code1010
    Net Due DateToday
    Contract AccountCA##
    Main Transaction0010
    Sub-transaction0010
    Amount3

    Leave the Contract column empty.

    Save and then post your entries.

    In the menu, choose Document → Post

    Result: The system outputs the message Document posted under the number: _________________

Task 3: Analyze Revenue and General Ledger Integration

Check whether the document from Post an Invoice to a Contract Account changed the account balance of contract account CA##.

Steps

  1. In the SAP Fiori launchpad search section FICA document and information and choose the tile Display Account Balance (Corresponding back-end transaction FPL9).

    Listtype: All Items.

    Change in List Display, Line Layout: Dunning Information.

    Enter your business partner BP## and choose Enter. If you have only one contract account for your business partner, this selection criterion is enough; you do not need to make any other entries.

    What tax amount is posted to which general ledger account?

    What revenue amount is posted to which general ledger account?

    1. The invoice has changed the account balance by the amount of EUR 10.

      What tax amount is posted to which general ledger account? Position the cursor on the document number and choose Environment → Document → Display → Item.

      Then choose Go to → General ledger Item list.

      What revenue amount is posted to which general ledger account?

      General ledger Item41000000EUR 8.40
      Tax22000000EUR 1.60

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