Differentiating between FI-CA Cash Application and FI-AR Cash Application

You might already be familiar with our existing cash application solution for FI-AR. This solution is already established on the market and many customers are using it. With this new version SAP Cash Application for FI-CA we offer a separate new product, with separate functionality. So why do we need two distinct solutions? Let’s look at the background.

At the bottom of the slide you see the "classical" processes. Logistical products are sold, fulfillment and delivery of these physical goods are handled in Sales and Distribution and open items are processed in Receivables Management and FI-AR. This is the focus of the existing cash application product, which was launched a few years ago.

As explained earlier, with Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, we focus on different use cases. Focus is on high volume goods or digital goods and services instead of physical goods, which might be sold on subscription-based business models. This impacts relevant process steps.

• Usage data and subscriptions have to be managed and the charging and invoicing process is typically handled with Convergent Charging and Convergent Invoicing instead of Sales and Distribution.
• Open receivables are handled in Contract Accounting as part of Customer Financial Management, with highly automated processes suitable for high volume businesses.

The flexible landscape also offers hybrid deployment options customized to fit to any customers current landscape and future requirements.

Supported processes and available integration scenarios are the following:… and many more

SAP S/4HANA BRIM contains multiple solution capabilities in its End-to-End process.

Manage Subscription -> Subscription Order Management

• Product catalog & offer management
• Order capture
• Order distribution

Collect Usage -> SAP Convergent Mediation

• Online and Offline Mediation

Price and Charge -> SAP Convergent Charging

• Service pricing & modeling
• Online & offline rating
• Partner revenue share calculation
  • Online account balance management

Bill & Settle, Handle Payments -> SAP Convergent Invoicing

• Customer billing & invoicing
• Partner payment statements

Manage Credits and Collections, Provider Customer Care -> SAP Customer Financial Management

• Revenue Management
• Payment Handling
• Credit management
• Collections management
• Financial customer care
• Dispute handling

As you can see functionality in both worlds is different and also from a technical perspective, both products use separate and distinct data tables and structures.

Thus, both applications for Cash Application have been separated, and are sold separately.

From a business point of view, the purpose is identical. Both solutions use intelligent logic and Machine Learning algorithms to improve the automation rate and assign open items to payments. In detail, both products focus on different functionality, we have separate road maps for both products and technical data structures are completely different.

The following table shows an overview of key business characteristics describing the typical use-cases for FI-CA or FI-AR.

As mentioned before FI-CA is usually used for a high-volume of open items and customers (typically B2C) whilst FI-AR is classically used for lower volume scenarios. Nonetheless FI-CA can also handle complex B2B scenarios. Also, the products which are handled in the two different Order-to-Cash Solutions are quite different. While FI-AR handles physical goods and the logistics processes, FI-CA deals with digital goods and therefore bills subscriptions and usages which are often coming from IoT or connected devices.

You have learned already that there are two distinct Cash Application solutions for FI-CA and FI-AR, and even learned why the two solutions exist and why a single solution is not possible. In the table below you can see the main product differences between the Cash Application Add-On for FI-CA and the one for FI-AR.

The listed differences come from the contrasting focus of the two Order-to-Cash Solutions. This leads, for example, to the point that FI-CA matches Business Partner, and/or Contract Account and FI-AR matches line items.