Using the Contract Account

The Contract account is used to store controlling data for long-term business relationships with a business partner. The data contained in a contract account influences the processes in invoicing, contract account and receivable and payable, taxation, and corresponding processes. In the case of business transactions to a contract account, invoicing documents for the subscription contract, as an example, are submitted to the active Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (FI-CA). When processing a business transaction, such as a subscription order or subscription contract, you can make sure the system determines a suitable contract account.

In SAP S/4HANA, only the contract account is used both in FI-CA and in Subscription Order Management (SOM). Business agreements are no longer required and, therefore, no longer available.

A business partner can be assigned to more than one contract account to store different payment information for different use cases. For each item in a subscription order or contract, a different contract account related to the business partner can be assigned.

Several master data objects are replicated between SAP S/4HANA and SAP Convergent Charging. Similarly, invoice products for rate plans or fees, for example, Cloud Selection Service can be exchanged between these systems.

In addition to that, the following Subscription Order Management (SOM) objects can be replicated to Contract Accounts Payable and Receivable (FI-CA) of SAP S/4HANA and SAP CC:

• Business Partner, called subscriber accounts in SAP CC
• Contract Account in FI-CA called external accounts in SAP CC

The subscription contract created for the IT department is replicated uni-directional from SAP SOM to FI-CA of SAP S/4HANA and to SAP CC. The contract is sent to the common object layer in FI-CA, from where the contract generation in SAP FI-CA itself, as well as in SAP CC, is triggered. Only in the case where the contract can be stored in both systems, will the contract be created.

On the SAP CC site, each provider contract is linked to the corresponding charge plans defined in the Cross Catalog Mapping.