Clearing Open Items in SAP FICO

This section describes how to manually clear open items. Usually you will run the payment program to clear invoices so that the manual clearing open items will not be necessary most of the time. However, you will sometimes have to clear items manually if you receive a refund from your vendor or have set up a direct debit procedure.

Clearing open items in the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable application components is explained with help of the standard function Posting and Clearing. The function for clearing items in the General Ledger is Post with clearing. The system also provides you with other functions specially designed for particular business transactions. This section will introduce you to these functions as well. You execute these functions in basically the same manner as the Posting and Clearing function.

You can clear only items that are posted to accounts that are kept on an open item basis. Open item management is automatically set for customer and vendor accounts. For G/L accounts, however, you have to set the open item management option in their master record yourself. Open item management would usually be set for the following G/L accounts:

• Check clearing accounts (bank clearing accounts)
• Goods receipt/invoice receipt (GR/IR) clearing accounts
  See the Materials Management documentation in the R/3 Library for more information on these accounts.
• Payroll clearing accounts
  See the Personnel Administration and Payroll Accounting documentation in the R/3 Library for more information on these accounts.

See also:

Introduction to Clearing Open Items

Posting and Clearing

Outgoing Payments with Printed Forms: Customers and Vendors

Clearing an Account

Resetting Cleared Items

Introduction to Clearing Open Items in SAP FICO

Open items are in fact unfinished transactions. For example, a vendor invoice that has not been settled remains in the vendor account until it is paid.

The open items of an account can only be cleared once you post an identical offsetting amount to the account. In other words, the balance of the items assigned to each other must equal zero as shown in the illustration below.

An example for accounts payable:

In clearing these items, the system assigns them a clearing document number and the date on which they were cleared. In this way, invoices in a vendor account are marked as paid, and items in a bank clearing account are marked as cleared.

The R/3 System offers different ways to clear open items. In a single clearing procedure, you can process multiple accounts, different account types, accounts from different company codes, and special G/L transactions.

Clearing Functions in Accounts Receivable

Clearing Functions in Accounts Payable

Clearing Functions in the General Ledger

Clearing Functions in General Ledger in SAP FICO

The following functions are available for manually clearing items:

Posting transaction	Example business transaction	Menu sequence
Incoming payment	Credit memo for a check deposited in the bank	Document entry ® Incoming payment
Outgoing payment	Debit memo for a drawn check	Document entry ® Outgoing payment
Post with clearing	Clearing the GR/IR clearing account	Document entry ® Post with clearing

The following information is based on the Post with clearing function. The various clearing functions have different screens for entering posting data, but the screens for processing open items are the same.

Clearing Functions in Accounts Receivable in SAP FICO

The following functions are available for manually clearing items:

Posting transaction	Example business transaction	Menu sequence
Incoming payment	Customer payment	Document entry ® Incoming payment or Payment fast entry
Outgoing payment	Debit memo procedure Cash payments	Document entry ® Other ® Outgoing payment ® Post
Outgoing payment with printed form	Immediate payment by check	Document entry ® Other ® Outgoing payment ® Post + print forms
Internal transfer	Invoice posted as credit memo due to quality defects	Document entry ® Other ® Intern.transf.psting ® With clearing
Online check	Automatically generated check was damaged during print	Document ® More functions ® Print payment forms

The system also provides the following additional functions for automatically posting incoming/outgoing payments and clearing open items.

Automatic Functions for Posting Incoming and Outgoing Payments

Example Business Transaction	Procedure Country	Menu sequence
Customer payments	POR Switzerland	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Payments ® POR procedure (CH)
	Lockbox USA	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Lockbox
	Check deposit transaction with check posting and generation of a check deposit list for the bank	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Elec check deposit
Incoming, outgoing payments	Electronic bank statement with Multicash	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Electronic bank statement

See the FI - Treasury documentation, FI - Electronic Bank Statement, or the program documentation for more information on these automatic functions.

Clearing Functions in Accounts Payable in SAP FICO

The following functions are available for manually clearing items:

Clearing Functions in Accounts Payable

Posting transaction	Example Business Transaction	Menu sequence
Outgoing payment	Debit memo procedure	Document entry ® Outgoing payment ® Post
Outgoing payment with printed form	Immediate payment by check	Document entry ® Outgoing payment ® Post + print forms
Internal transfer	memo due to a product defect	Document entry ® Others ® Posting With clearing
Incoming payment	Refund from your vendor, e.g. annual quantity discount	Document entry ® Others ® Incoming payment

The SAP System also supports the automatic entry of bank postings for outgoing payments by importing bank statement data using the Electronic Bank Statement function. For more information about this function, see the FI Treasury and Electronic Bank Statement (FI) documentation.

Outgoing Payments with Printed Forms: AP/AR in SAP FICO

You can print checks manually without running the payment program. There are two ways of doing this:

• You can post a payment and at the same time print the check for it.
• You can print just the check for a payment already posted. This may be necessary, for example, if a check is damaged during printing.

Clearing Open Items and Printing the Forms: Customers and Vendors

Printing Forms for Items Already Cleared: Customers and Vendors

Clearing Open Items and Printing Forms in SAP FICO

To post a payment, clear the items involved, and print the payment medium directly, proceed as follows:

1. Choose Document entry
® Outgoing payment ® Post + print forms from the Accounts Payable menu or
choose Document entry ® Other ® Outgoing payment ® Post and print forms from the Accounts Receivable menu.

You reach the screen for entering the specifications.

In this screen you enter the specifications for printing checks and payment advice notes. These include company code, payment method, house bank, and the printer for the check and payment advice.

You enter this data in this screen once per working session. You can change your entries at any time.

2. Next choose Specifications
® Enter payments.

This screen is only slightly different from the standard entry screen for outgoing payments:

You can post the whole payment amount on account (advance payment). To do this, select the Payment on account check box and enter the text you want to include on the payment advice note.

Generally, you only need to enter the amount and value date as specifications for the bank posting. The system determines the G/L account to be posted to from the specifications on the payment method and the house bank. For this purpose, the system refers to the configuration of the payment program.

3. Process the open items as usual, either by entering selection criteria or directly by selecting Goto
® Open items.

You can now process the open items as described in this section. To change the specifications, choose Goto ® Specifications.

4. Post the document.

If you have selected the specification Print immediately, a dialog box appears with the message that the document has been posted. Read further under point 5.

If you have not selected Print immediately, the print request is stored in the spool system. After posting, the system displays the spool numbers for the check or the payment advice note. You can then start printing separately from the spool.

5. If you select
ENTER, the system confirms that the print request has been created.

Printing Forms for Cleared Items: Customers & Vendors in SAP FICO

To print the check for items already cleared, proceed as follows from the Accounts Payable menu:

1. Choose Document
® Additional functions ® Print payment forms.

You reach the screen for entering the specifications.

In this screen you enter the specifications for printing checks and payment advice notes. These include company code, payment method, house bank, and the printer for the check and payment advice.

2. Choose Check
® Print.

On the basis of the postings in the payment document, the system tries to determine the payee and the house bank to which the check should be issued. To do this, it refers to the values defined for the payment program in the system configuration. You are required to make further entries in the following cases:

• If there is more than one possible payee (this may be the case if you are paying the invoices of more than one vendor at a time), or if there is an alternative payee specified in the master records of a particular vendor, the system requires you to select the payee in a pop-up window.
• If the system was not able to determine the house bank from the postings in the document, a pop-up window appears where you are asked to select a house bank.
• If you want to print a check for a payment document that was created by the payment program, other entries are necessary (if you are working with pre-numbered checks): You must specify in a pop-up window whether the system should use the same number that the payment program suggested or whether a new check form is necessary.

Clearing an Account in SAP FICO

This function differs from posting with a clearing transaction or posting with a payment in the following ways:

• You do not need to enter a document header

• You can only clear open items from one account

You can use this function to clear debits and credits which balance to zero (for example, invoices and payments which you have already entered).

Since internal transfer postings may have to be generated, a document type must be defined for the account clearing. To make this specification, execute the activity Define posting key for clearing open items in the Implementation Guide for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. On the next screen, select the clearing procedure Transfer posting with clearing. On the data screen for this procedure, specify a default document type per account type.

To clear open items in an account:

1. From the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, or General Ledger menu, choose Account
® Clear.

The Clearing: Header Data screen appears.

2. Enter the account number in the Account field and if necessary, also enter a currency key for the clearing document in the Currency field. If you don’t enter a currency key, the company code’s local currency will be used. The company code and clearing date will be set by the system.
3. You can search for specific open items to clear by selecting the appropriate field, such as Amount, and selecting
ENTER. The next screen prompts you to specify which open items to select.
4. To display the open items for processing, choose Edit
® Open items.
5. Process the open items as described in
Processing the Open Items.
6. Once the debits equal the credits, choose Account
® Clear.

The system assigns the clearing date and clearing document number to each open item cleared.

Resetting Cleared Items in SAP FICO

You can reset clearing procedures for individual documents. When resetting clearing postings, the clearing data is removed from the line items (and the reversal data, if it exists, is removed from the document header). The document changes are logged and can be displayed in the change documents. To reset a cleared item to open item status, proceed as follows:

1. From the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, or General Ledger menu, choose Document
® Reset cleared items.
2. Enter the clearing document number, company code, and (if appropriate) the fiscal year.
3. First display the items from the clearing document by choosing Goto
® Accompanying items. You reach the line item display. To return to the initial screen, select Back.
4. From the initial screen, choose Goto
® Accompanying corrsp. to see whether or not correspondence requests were created and sent. The displayed list will not contain correspondence requests that were reorganized (deleted).

When resetting a clearing document, all accompanying correspondence requests are marked so that you can see that their clearing document was reset. Reorganized (deleted) requests are not marked in this way.

To return to the initial screen, choose Back.

5. Choose Cleared items
® Reset cleared items. If any correspondence requests have been created, the system asks you whether you want these requests to be marked as Completed in order to prevent the same correspondence from being sent out at a later date.
You can also decide whether the clearing document should be reversed. If you do not reverse it, it will also remain in the system as an open item to be cleared along with the other open items.
There are, however, some exceptions to this procedure which include clearing transactions in a third currency, clearing documents with exchange rate differences, and clearing transactions involving documents posted net. In these cases, the clearing document is reversed by the system when it resets the cleared items.

If you use the Cancel check payment function, in addition to the cleared items being reset, the payment document is reversed and the related check is voided in the check register and a void reason code is set for it.

Clearing Open Items in Release 4.0 in SAP FICO

Enhancements to Clearing Documents

If open items are cleared in one or more accounts without the need for clearing entries (no adjustment), the system generates a clearing document header for each company code involved in the clearing procedure.

The system also generates this document header if open items are cleared by running the clearing program.

Clearing Entries

In clearing open items, the system automatically generates the necessary clearing entries. These postings contain all information necessary for properly updating transaction figures, commitments, and account balances. Separate clearing entries can be generated for each of the different company codes, business areas, accounts, or trading partners.

It is also possible to distinguish clearing entries by other criteria such as assignment, reference number, or contract number and at the same time to transfer their account assignments to the cleared items.

You can define special client-independent rules for classifying clearing entries in this manner. These rules are called clearing rules. For each rule, you choose the fields you require as criteria for classifying the clearing entries.

Clearing rules are assigned at the client level and account type level so that you can define differing classifications for customer, vendor, and G/L accounts.

Overview of Clearing Accounts

When displaying a document or even the clearing documents that are comprised of just a document header, you can navigate to an overview of the accounts in which items were cleared.

Special Periods

In the transactions for:

Clearing G/L accounts

Clearing customer accounts

Clearing vendor accounts

you can also enter a special period in addition to the posting date. you can also enter a special period in addition to the posting date so that you can clear items in the prior year if only special periods are open for posting.

Account Name Display

In open item processing, the system displays the account name for G/L accounts or the first part of the customer or vendor name in the screen frame. If you are clearing several accounts, the system displays the information on the first account you select for processing along with the text More.

Text in Clearing Entries

You can make a text entry in each clearing transaction (account clearing, incoming payment, outgoing payment). This text is copied to every clearing entry that is created during the transaction.

Clearing Down Payment Requests

Selecting and activating down payment requests (incoming payment, outgoing payment, account maintenance) during clearing triggers the system to post a corresponding down payment. This saves you from having to enter the down payment yourself as well as from having to switch between two transactions when processing incoming payments.

This new function finally supports an online payment of a down payment request and the printing of a payment form (check).

Canceling the down payment request is not possible anymore since the item is cleared during account maintenance. Down payment requests are canceled in the same manner as other documents, using the reversal function.

Clearing Open Items Across Company Codes

If open items from an account in other company codes, such as 0002 and 0003, should be selected when executing the clearing procedure using company code 0001, you can still clear them even if the account from which you are clearing them was not created in company code 0001. As long as no items have to be posted to this account in company code 0001, it is not necessary to create a master record for the account in company code 0001.

Automatic Clearing

The clearing programs SAPF123 and SAPF123W have been replaced by the program SAPF124. This new clearing program uses the clearing transactions that are available for manual account clearing so that the system can post any exchange rate differences or generate transfer postings if the items being cleared have different business areas or trading partners. Furthermore, the new program can clear documents that were posted using the net method and documents that contain parallel currencies.

The system no longer uses the business area and trading partner entries as fixed criteria for grouping open items for clearing so that automatic clearing can be performed across multiple business areas.

You also have to specify a clearing date.

Customizing: Clearing Document

If you clear open items using a transaction (for example, Clear customer account) in which a document type cannot be entered in the clearing document header, the system enters the document type that is preset for the clearing procedure. This is the same document type that would be used if transfer postings were necessary for clearing because of different business areas in the affected items.

For more information on how to set this document type, in Customizing for General Ledger Accounting, see activity Define posting keys for clearing.

Customizing: Clearing Entries

You have to define all the clearing rules that you want to use in the system using transaction OBIA. After defining the rules, you assign them to account types using transaction OBIB.

Customizing: Automatic Clearing

If you want the system to continue to group open items by business area or trading partner for automatic clearing, you have to maintain these criteria (user criteria). There are five user criteria and a variety of fields you can choose from. The system lets you specify field names that are more than five characters long and fields that have an internal length of up to 20 places.

Procedure: Clearing Document

When displaying clearing documents in the document display, the system indicates that there is a clearing document in place of line items.

Procedure: Overview of Clearing Accounts

When displaying documents (clearing documents and payment documents) that clear other line items, you can have the system display all accounts in which items were cleared by choosing Extras ® Clearing info.

Clearing Open Items in SAP FICO

This section describes how to manually clear open items. Usually you will run the payment program to clear invoices so that the manual clearing open items will not be necessary most of the time. However, you will sometimes have to clear items manually if you receive a refund from your vendor or have set up a direct debit procedure.

Clearing open items in the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable application components is explained with help of the standard function Posting and Clearing. The function for clearing items in the General Ledger is Post with clearing. The system also provides you with other functions specially designed for particular business transactions. This section will introduce you to these functions as well. You execute these functions in basically the same manner as the Posting and Clearing function.

You can clear only items that are posted to accounts that are kept on an open item basis. Open item management is automatically set for customer and vendor accounts. For G/L accounts, however, you have to set the open item management option in their master record yourself. Open item management would usually be set for the following G/L accounts:

• Check clearing accounts (bank clearing accounts)
• Goods receipt/invoice receipt (GR/IR) clearing accounts
  See the Materials Management documentation in the R/3 Library for more information on these accounts.
• Payroll clearing accounts
  See the Personnel Administration and Payroll Accounting documentation in the R/3 Library for more information on these accounts.

See also:

Introduction to Clearing Open Items

Posting and Clearing

Outgoing Payments with Printed Forms: Customers and Vendors

Clearing an Account

Resetting Cleared Items

Configuration Steps For Preparation of GL A/C IN SAP FICO

Explain the steps for the creation of GL Account.

By : Naidu

Check all the configuration steps for preparation of GL a/c:

1. Define company T.code ox15 (its is necessary for consolidation purpose)

2. Define Company code t.code ox02

3. Assign company code to company t.code ox16

4. Edit chart of account t.code ob13

5. Assign company code to chart of account t.code ob62

6. Maintain fiscal year variant t.code ob29

7. Assign company code to fiscal year variant t.code ob37

8. Define posting period variant t.code obbo

9. Open and close posting period t.code ob52

10. Assign posting period variant to company code t.code obbp

11. Define document type and number range t.code oba7

12. Define field status variant t.code obc4

13. Assign company code to field status variant
Go to SPRO --> Financial accouting -> Global settings --> Select your company code and double click. You can see the field status variant field there.

Introduction to Clearing Open Items in SAP FICO

Open items are in fact unfinished transactions. For example, a vendor invoice that has not been settled remains in the vendor account until it is paid.

The open items of an account can only be cleared once you post an identical offsetting amount to the account. In other words, the balance of the items assigned to each other must equal zero as shown in the illustration below.

An example for accounts payable:

In clearing these items, the system assigns them a clearing document number and the date on which they were cleared. In this way, invoices in a vendor account are marked as paid, and items in a bank clearing account are marked as cleared.

The R/3 System offers different ways to clear open items. In a single clearing procedure, you can process multiple accounts, different account types, accounts from different company codes, and special G/L transactions.

Clearing Functions in Accounts Receivable

Clearing Functions in Accounts Payable

Clearing Functions in the General Ledger

Clearing Functions in General Ledger in SAP FICO

The following functions are available for manually clearing items:

Posting transaction	Example business transaction	Menu sequence
Incoming payment	Credit memo for a check deposited in the bank	Document entry ® Incoming payment
Outgoing payment	Debit memo for a drawn check	Document entry ® Outgoing payment
Post with clearing	Clearing the GR/IR clearing account	Document entry ® Post with clearing

The following information is based on the Post with clearing function. The various clearing functions have different screens for entering posting data, but the screens for processing open items are the same.

Certification Questions

Clearing

Clearing Functions

Clearing Open Items

Setup FI Fiscal Year Period

The client wants fiscal year to be set from May 1 – April 30 but they use a 4,4,5 accounting period setup meaning that every month end on the last Friday of the month. I am setting for 2006-2007. As you know, the FYV should be year dependent, so how can the periods be set up.

In IMG go to financial accounting global setting then go to fiscal year variant and set the fiscal year variant on year dependent year and follow the following procedure:

1. enter name of month started from may and end on april
2. enter the number of days in a month you want to close for example in may number of days is 28 instead of 31
3. enter period from 01 to 12 started from may to april
4. enter -1 against the month from jan to april

For Example :

Month Number of Days Period Year Shift
May06 28 01 0
June 35 02 0
July 28 03 0
Aug 28 04 0
Sep 35 05 0
Oct 28 06 0
Nov 28 07 0
Dec 35 08 0
Jan07 28 09 -1
Feb 28 10 -1
Mar 35 11 -1
Apr 31 12 -1

Clearing Functions in Accounts Receivable in SAP FICO

The following functions are available for manually clearing items:

Posting transaction	Example business transaction	Menu sequence
Incoming payment	Customer payment	Document entry ® Incoming payment or Payment fast entry
Outgoing payment	Debit memo procedure Cash payments	Document entry ® Other ® Outgoing payment ® Post
Outgoing payment with printed form	Immediate payment by check	Document entry ® Other ® Outgoing payment ® Post + print forms
Internal transfer	Invoice posted as credit memo due to quality defects	Document entry ® Other ® Intern.transf.psting ® With clearing
Online check	Automatically generated check was damaged during print	Document ® More functions ® Print payment forms

The system also provides the following additional functions for automatically posting incoming/outgoing payments and clearing open items.

Automatic Functions for Posting Incoming and Outgoing Payments

Example Business Transaction	Procedure Country	Menu sequence
Customer payments	POR Switzerland	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Payments ® POR procedure (CH)
	Lockbox USA	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Lockbox
	Check deposit transaction with check posting and generation of a check deposit list for the bank	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Elec check deposit
Incoming, outgoing payments	Electronic bank statement with Multicash	Cash Management menu Incomings ® Electronic bank statement

See the FI - Treasury documentation, FI - Electronic Bank Statement, or the program documentation for more information on these automatic functions.

Clearing Functions in Accounts Payable in SAP FICO

The following functions are available for manually clearing items:

Clearing Functions in Accounts Payable

Posting transaction	Example Business Transaction	Menu sequence
Outgoing payment	Debit memo procedure	Document entry ® Outgoing payment ® Post
Outgoing payment with printed form	Immediate payment by check	Document entry ® Outgoing payment ® Post + print forms
Internal transfer	memo due to a product defect	Document entry ® Others ® Posting With clearing
Incoming payment	Refund from your vendor, e.g. annual quantity discount	Document entry ® Others ® Incoming payment

The SAP System also supports the automatic entry of bank postings for outgoing payments by importing bank statement data using the Electronic Bank Statement function. For more information about this function, see the FI Treasury and Electronic Bank Statement (FI) documentation.

Account Payable

Account Posting

Archiving