Sales Order Processing with Customer Down Payment (BKJ)

You usually arrange down payments with the customer when dealing with plant engineering and construction or capital goods.

Down payments are already created in the sales order.

At the corresponding due date, you send a down payment request (billing document in Sales and Distribution) to the customer.

The down payment request in Sales and Distribution is automatically posted in Financial Accounting as a down payment request (posted as a noted item). The item has a special general ledger (G/L) indicator F, which ensures that posting is statistical. Posting is made to a different reconciliation account, which allows you to differentiate down payment requests from other receivables.

When posting an incoming payment for a down payment, the down payment is assigned to the down payment request. The amount paid as the down payment is also assigned to the sales order account. The item has a special G/L indicator A.

When processing partial or final invoices, the down payments made are transferred as down payments to be cleared. Within Financial Accounting, the down payments are deducted from the special reconciliation account and entered in the standard reconciliation account. The down payments for clearing then appear as open items for the customer and reduce the receivables total.

Down payment processing is carried out with the billing plan function.

You can store one or more down payment agreements as a date in a billing plan.

You can enter the value of the agreed down payment either as a fixed amount or as a percentage of the value of the item.

Control is carried out via Date Categories and billing rules, for example:

• Billing rule 4 - Down payment for percentage milestone billing.

• Billing rule 5 - Down payment for value-related milestone billing.

The down payment agreement can be assigned directly to an item, or it can be defined as valid for all items in the order.

As soon as the billing date (in the billing plan) for the down payment has been reached, the system creates a down payment invoice and sends it to the customer. You use billing type FAZ to create the down payment.

You can create this down payment request as follows:

• Automatically via billing due list processing in a collective run.

• Explicitly by specifying the order number via the application Create Billing Document.

Tax is determined and displayed automatically when the down payment request is created. The down payment request in Financial Accounting is created automatically from the down payment request in Sales and Distribution. You can view the down payment requests created in Sales and Distribution and Financial Accounting via the document flow in the sales order.

When a down payment request is settled, the special G/L indicator A displays the incoming payment in Financial Accounting as a down payment by posting. You can select an incoming payment from the open requests and choose the Create down payments button to assign it to a process.

In the open items of accounts receivable accounting, you can view the down payments using the special G/L indicator A.

The down payment request is correspondingly set to Cleared in the document flow of the sales order.

This is the process diagram for scope item BKJ, Sales Order Processing with Customer Down Payment.

The following are the main steps of the process:

• The Create Sales Order step confirms the intention of the customer to order goods and initiates the process.

• The Change Sales Order step removes the billing block for the down payment.

• The Create Down Payment Request step debits the customer account for the down payment.

• The Post a Down Payment step records the customer payment of the down payment amount.

• The Create Delivery step initiates the shipping of the goods.

• The Execute Picking step executes the picking of the goods from the warehouse and it's preparation for shipment.

• The Post Good Issue step confirms the shipment of the goods.

• The Change Sales Order step removes the billing block for the final invoice.

• The Create Billing Document step sends the final invoice to the customer.

The table Main SAP Fiori Apps Used, provides a list of role(s) and app(s) for every process step.

With the Manage Sales Orders app, you can search for sales orders according to your filter criteria and display them in a list.

On the list created using the Manage Sales Orders app, you can execute following actions:

• Able to search for sales orders using a free test search
• Able to search orders by entering a value in one or more filter fields
• Able to create a variant for the current filter selection and save it for later reference
• able to hide filter bar
• able to sort sales orders
• Able to hide and show columns in the list

From the list of orders, you can also navigate to related applications. For example, you can display sales order details or display the process flow. Navigating to the process flow provides you with a graphical overview of the chain of connected process steps and corresponding business documents (document flow). For example, you can see the status of a sales order, whether it is relevant for shipping, and if an invoice has been created. Following is a list of transactional features:

• Able to create sales orders
• Able to reject all items for a sales order.
• Able to set or remove header level delivery and billing block
• Able to navigate to the sales order details to either display or change data
• Able to navigate to the customer 360 view app
• Able to navigate to the sales order object page
• Able to navigate to the customer object page
• Able to navigate to the process flow

Using the Create Outbound Deliveries app, you can create outbound delivery runs from a list of sales documents. This app also allows you to display logs with information related to your sales orders or deliveries. For example, if errors occur while you are creating deliveries, the system issues a message to the log. Similarly, the system issues a message to the log if you successfully create a delivery. Following is a list of key features:

• Able to search for sales documents due for delivery using basic filter options. you can also search using additional filter options
• Able to sort table entries by ascending or descending and then select the filter option you want to sort by
• Able to personalize table columns by selecting the columns you want to display in the Sales Documents Due for Delivery table
• Able to display a log that provides information about the delivery run that you have created
• Able to create outbound deliveries from sales documents

With the Create Billing Documents app, you can create billing documents, for example, invoices and credit memos, from items in the billing due list. This includes debit memo requests, sales orders, deliveries, and other Sales and Distribution (SD) documents. You can also generate temporary billing documents that you can review before converting them to final billing documents.

When searching, you can show or hide the filter bar. You can save your filter settings and restore the original settings.

Saved layout variants also save the values that you have set in filters. You can share saved layout variants with other system users. Following are view and Search features:

• Able to search using basic filters; by document number, document category, and sold-to-party for all billing due list items created before and including a certain date
• Able to search using additional features; add additional filters to the filter bar and filter by sales organization, by billing type, by customer project or billing document issue
• Able to select the columns that you want to display
• Able to sort the displayed data by one or more data types
• Able to group the data
• Able to use page variants to save and load custom filter and column layouts that you have created

The Create Billing Documents app has the following transactional features:

• Display details of any SD document in the billing due list (for example, sales order, outbound delivery or credit memo request) by choosing the corresponding document number.
• You can make billing settings so that the system performs intended actions automatically when you create billing documents.
• You can select one or more items in the billing due list to create billing documents for them.
• After you have created billing documents, you can manage them using the Manage Billing Documents app.

According to the billing settings, the following actions are performed by the system when creating billing documents:

• Enter the billing date and type before billing.

  If you enable this setting and choose to create billing documents, the system requests a billing date and the required billing type before creating billing documents.

• Create separate billing document for each item of billing due list.

  If you enable this setting and choose to create billing documents, the system creates separate billing documents for each item of the billing due list that you have selected.

• Automatically post billing documents

  The system automatically posts all billing documents that you create to accounting and triggers output (for example, an invoice by e-mail). Note that if you do not choose to post billing documents automatically, you must post them manually using the Manage Billing Documents app.

• Display billing documents after creation.

  The system generates and displays temporary billing documents for the SD documents that you have selected for billing. You then have the option to save or discard them. Saving converts them to final billing documents, while discarding them returns you to the billing due list.