Differences Outside Tolerance Limits in SAP FICO

Differences exceeding the tolerance limits set for clearing them automatically may still occur during a payment procedure due to various reasons. Your customer could, for example, send you a payment advice note informing you of the items he or she is sending the payment for, but the amount paid may not be enough to match the amount of outstanding receivables.

In processing the customer’s open items, you can choose from one of the following options:

• You can post the payment as a
partial payment. In which case, the system does not clear the receivables, but posts the payment with an invoice reference by copying the invoice number to the Invoice reference field in the payment item. To determine the date that payment is due on, the system calculates the date on which the net amount of the invoice is due and enters this date in the Baseline date field for the payment. The payment is then included in the dunning program and in Cash Management at this date.
• You can use the payment to clear the original receivables and post the remaining amount to the customer account as a
residual item. The payment amount is noted in the line items of the original receivables.
• You can clear the receivables and post the difference to an expense account.

The system requires posting keys for each of these transactions. You predefine these keys in the system. For more information on this, see Posting with Clearing.

To post residual items, you have to specify what terms of payment you want to apply to these items. Per business partner, you can determine that:

• The terms of payment are taken from the invoice.
• The difference posting is always assigned predefined terms of payment. You can use a terms of payment key to do this. During clearing, the terms of payment defined under the key are used for the residual items.
• Cash discount should be granted only for the portion that was paid. The remaining cash discount is granted only after the outstanding receivable is paid in full and its payment deadline for cash discount is not exceeded. You should always choose this option if the terms of payment in the invoice are used for the residual items.
• Only certain dunning levels should be assigned the residual items. To do this, you can enter a dunning key that represents the highest assignable dunning level. In this way, you can ensure, for example, that legal dunning proceedings are not initiated for residual items.