Understanding the Post-Reconciliation Process

After the invoice reconciliation process concludes and the invoice is approved in SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing, the final step is to send a payment to the supplier. SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing creates a document called a payment request to track the payment process.

SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing creates the payment request and the IR document at the same time. The payment request includes a payment schedule based on the payment terms in the invoice reconciliation (IR) document. Payment requests also include the amounts for indirect and withholding tax lines and charges.

Your site can export payment requests (also referred to as theOK2Pay file) using one of several data export tasks in Ariba Administrator. These export tasks support the CSV file channel and the Web services channel.

There are three types of export payment tasks:

• Export Payment Requests- Exports payment request data to five CSV files, zipped together as the OK2Pay file. This task can be used with SAP ERP and PeopleSoft as well as generic ERP systems that can handle line item details and split accounting information in separate files.
• Export Payment Requests with Advance Payments- This task is for sites configured to export approved invoices for payment directly from the SAP Ariba Buying solution to the ERP system in CSV file format, and not from SAP Business Network.
• Export Payment Requests with Advance Payments and Taxes- This task is for SAP Ariba sites that use third-party tax integration and are configured as PeopleSoft or Generic variants.

SAP Ariba administrators automate the export tasks and integrate them into their back-end system, which will process the payment. Essentially, the data in the OK2Pay file notifies the back-end system that payment is due for a specific number of invoices.

The OK2Pay export uses date ranges to export payment information and by default exports all payment information since the task was last run. The exported file contains five CSV spreadsheets:

• PaymentHeaderExport.csv - contains general information about payments.
• PaymentLineItemDet.csv - provides line level details for invoices.
• PaymentAccountDet.csv - contains line item payment information.
• PaymentDetailExport.csv - provides line level details for invoices.
• PaymentTaxExport.csv - contains tax data about an invoice.

Please see SAP Payment Request Data or Generic Payment Request Data for more specific information on the two variants. 

Remittances, also called remittance advice, are summary statements that provide details about payment transactions. For example, a remittance might list the invoices associated with the payment, the payment method used, bank information, discount information, and amount paid.

The import is configured by the solution administrator and consists of two files:

• Remittance.csv - defines the remittance information
• RemittanceDetails.csv - Defines the details of each remittance specified in Remittance.csv

Remittance advice is imported to SAP Business Network using the SAP Integration Suite, managed gateway for spend management and SAP Business Network from a customer’s external system, and copied to the SAP Ariba Invoice Management or SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing solution. Essentially, the remittance advice import data provides visibility on the payment information in SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing and updates the invoice status to Paid for both buyer and supplier.