SAP Business Network is an online platform that enables a company to form relationships with their suppliers and conduct order and invoicing transactions. Buying organizations use SAP Business Network to find suppliers from which they want to purchase products or services and invite suppliers to form trading relationships.
After a supplier has been enabled on the SAP Business Network, the buying organization can view any public catalogs the supplier has created or receive customer-specific catalogs from their suppliers. Buyers can then place orders, and suppliers in turn can create order-based invoices.
If the buyer allows, suppliers can also create invoices that are not based on a purchase order or enable a supplier to punch into the buyer’s invoicing system to create contract-based invoices.
Buyer customers can connect to the SAP Business Network through their invoicing cloud solution, either SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing or SAP Ariba Invoice Management. Another method is through SAP Business Network Commerce Automation, which connects an external ERP to the SAP Business Network to exchange cXML documents via one of the supported SAP Business Network adapters.
Suppliers can either create invoices online in their SAP Business Network account or submit them electronically from their external system via cXML or EDI. If suppliers create invoices online, then the account administrator can assign specific roles to users that allow them to view purchase orders and create invoices.
All invoices regardless of how they are submitted to SAP Business Network are validated against the specific buyer’s invoicing rules. Invoices that fail that validation are rejected automatically.
Once the invoices are validated and signed, they are downloaded to the buyer’s invoicing system for review and approval. If the system triggers an exception during reconciliation, they can dispute or reject the invoice and require the supplier to resubmit a corrected invoice. Exceptions could be between the expected and actual tax amount or a line item invoice to purchase order mismatch for example.
To learn more about the supplier invoicing perspective on the SAP Business Network, please review the SAP Business Network Guide to Invoicingguide.
Types of invoices on the SAP Business Network
| Invoice type | Description |
|---|---|
| Material | Also called purchase order-based, these are standard invoices routed through SAP Business Network that do not contain any service lines (lines that require a service sheet). |
| Service | Another type of standard invoice, these are based on service sheets that suppliers create from service lines in service purchase orders routed through SAP Business Network. Service sheets and service invoices can include both services and material goods. |
| Lean Service | These are invoices routed through SAP Business Network. A single invoice can be created for all the Lean Service line items in a purchase order. |
| Limit Service | These are invoices routed through SAP Business Network. A single invoice can be created for all the Limit Service line items in a purchase order. |
| Limit Order | A Limit Order line item is defined as the fulfillment of a service or material delivery at a price limited by a predetermined amount within a time period specified by the buyer. These are invoices routed through SAP Business Network. A single invoice can be created for all the Limit Order line items in a purchase order. |
| Non-PO | A Limit Order line item is defined as the fulfillment of a service or material delivery at a price limited by a predetermined amount within a time period specified by the buyer. These are invoices routed through SAP Business Network. A single invoice can be created for all the Limit Order line items in a purchase order. |
| Credit memo | A credit memo represents an amount owed to a buyer by a supplier, typically from an earlier transaction such as a purchase order or a contract invoice. The amount due is a negative number. |
| Line-level debit memo | Line-level debit memos represent an amount owed to a supplier by a buyer from an earlier transaction. Line-level debit memos are always due to a price adjustment (price increase). |
| Blanket purchase order based | A blanket purchase order (BPO) is a type of contract that buyers create that forms an agreement to spend a specific amount with a supplier for critical items or services. |
| Contract-based | A buying organization using an SAP Ariba invoicing solution can allow collaborative invoicing for suppliers. In that case, suppliers punch in to the buyer’s invoicing solution to either create the entire invoice in the buyer’s invoicing site, or they punch in to retrieve the contract information and add items from the contract to the invoice, but finalize the invoice in and submit the invoice from the SAP Business Network - just as a standard invoice. |
| Self billing | SAP Business Network can automatically transmit self-billing invoices to suppliers and buyers based on data in purchase orders, scheduling agreements, and goods receipts using an automated process. |