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

Clearing in SAP FICO

The section on the Clearing Program introduces you to the clearing process in the R/3 System and explains how to automatically clear open items using the clearing program.

The section on clearing functions describes the requirements that need to be fulfilled in order to clear open items in the R/3 System.

The section on Clearing Open Items sapurl_link_0003_0003_0004 describes the process of clearing open items using the Post with Clearing function.

The section on Clearing Open Items in Release 4.0 describes the new functions for clearing open items in Release 4.0.

The Clearing Program in SAP FICO

Open items of an account can be cleared manually using the Account clearing function, or they can be cleared automatically by the system. Automatic clearing is especially useful for clearing accounts in the G/L account area.

This section describes:

• What prerequisites must be in place to clear accounts automatically.
• How to clear accounts automatically.

Introduction to the Clearing Program

Prerequisites for Clearing

Executing the Clearing Program

Parameters for Running the Program

Running the Clearing Program

Reviewing the Clearing Results

Generating a Line Item List and Additional Log

Introduction to the Clearing Program in SAP FICO

You can clear open items from customer, vendor, and G/L accounts by running the clearing program. This program uses predefined criteria to group together open items per account. If the balance of the group of open items equals zero in local, foreign, and where applicable, the parallel currency, the items are marked as cleared.

When clearing open items, the program sets a clearing document number and a clearing date in the line items. It uses the document number and posting date from the most recent document (highest document number) that is part of the clearing process.

The program groups together those items from an account that have the same:

• Business area
• Trading partner ID
• Reconciliation account number
• Currency in which the general ledger is updated
• Four criteria that you can freely define

You can specify criteria for each account type based on a single account or an interval of accounts. These criteria let you select what items to process together and ensure that only those items that are part of the same business transaction are cleared with each other.

You want to clear the open items in the Goods Receipt/Invoice Receipt Clearing account automatically. In addition to the criteria predefined by the system, you set the criteria for the purchase order number. This criteria ensures that only goods receipt items and invoice items that belong to each other are cleared by each other.

Prerequisites for Clearing in SAP FICO

The following prerequisites must be met in order for open items to be cleared:

• The accounts must be set up with open item management.

• The accounts that can be cleared automatically must be defined in Customizing for Financial Accounting.

• The items to be cleared cannot trigger an extra posting such as cash discounts or exchange rate differences.

• The items cannot be special G/L transactions. These items are cleared with special functions.

See also:

Open Item Management

Criteria for Grouping Open Items

Items That Are Not Cleared

Open Item Management in SAP FICO

The basic prerequisite for automatic clearing is that the accounts must be kept on an open item basis. Customer and vendor accounts are always kept on an open item basis. This lets you monitor your outstanding receivables and payables at any time. The open item management option, however, must be set for general ledger accounts. You would set this option, for example, for clearing accounts and bank sub-accounts in order to be able to track whether the business transactions posted to these accounts are closed yet.

Open item management ensures that all items that have not yet been cleared are available in the system. Only after every open item in a document is cleared can a document be archived.

Criteria for Grouping Open Items in SAP FICO

In addition to the criteria predefined by the system, you can define up to four other criteria to group together open items for clearing. To do this, enter the following when configuring the clearing program:

• Account type

• An account number or a number interval

• Criteria

Fields from tables BSEG or BKPF can be entered as criteria. If possible, you should select fields so that they will also be contained in tables BSIS (G/L accounts), BSID (customer accounts) or BSIK (vendor accounts).

Items That Are Not Cleared in SAP FICO

The clearing program does not clear any special G/L transactions, and because it cannot post new documents, it does not clear items if extra postings would have to be made to clear them.

You posted a vendor invoice. This item could be cleared with a credit memo. At the time of clearing, cash discount would have to be posted. Therefore, the clearing program cannot clear the item.

Items that require an extra posting are:

• Items that contain cash discount. Cash discount would have to be posted for these items.

• Items that were posted using the net method. Cash discount clearing would have to be made for these items.

• Items that would require a withholding tax posting.

An extra posting would also be required if the items balance to zero in document currency, but not in the local currency or parallel currency (group or global company currency, etc.). Automatic clearing could not be made in this case either.

You can use the special program SAPF123W to clear the Goods Receipts/Invoice Receipts Clearing accounts. This program can post exch

Parameters for Running the Program in SAP FICO

For the program run, you specify in which company codes which accounts should be cleared. You can specify individual accounts or intervals of account numbers. You can restrict the selection of open items even more by specifying a fiscal year.

If you do not enter any parameters, the entire dataset is selected. You should therefore always specify company codes and accounts.

To avoid having to enter the parameters repeatedly for every program run, you can store your specifications in variants. A variant consists of a complete group of clearing parameters which you save and call up together .

Running the Clearing Program in SAP FICO

To execute the clearing program from the General Ledger, Accounts Payable, or Accounts Receivable menu:

1. Choose Periodic processing
® Automatic clearing.

In the General Ledger menu, you can choose to clear General G/L accounts or the GR/IR clearing account.

The screen to enter the parameters for clearing open items appears.

2. Specify the accounts you want the to clear and select the lists you want the program to generate.

To have the program actually clear any open items and update the database, make certain that the Test run indicator is not selected. The test run mode is the default mode.

3. Choose Program
® Execute or Execute in background.

The system lists the results of the clearing procedure.

Showing posts with label Clearing. Show all posts Generating a Line Item List and Additional Log in SAP FICO

The program outputs:

• A line item list, which can be output in either short form or detailed form. Select the Detail list option to output a detailed list.

• An additional log, which records information about the line items that were not selected and any system messages on the account types for which no items were selected.

You can print the lists by selecting List ® Print.