Can we improve transparency of the condition based downpayment solution (AZWA)?

[Former Member]

Hi everyone

Does anyone have any ideas for catering to this business scenario?

Normally we use delivery related billing. Sometimes after creating the sales order, a decision is made that the customer should make the full payment before the goods are delivered. These could be multiple payments.  For example

• 30% Downpayment should be paid on receipt of order confirmation
• 70% Downpayment should be paid on receipt of ship documentation
• Goods issue occurs when full payment is received

I am familiar with the condition based Downpayment solution where we use AZWA condition and manually create the DP request in FI.

The condition based downpayment solution isn’t ideal in this situation for a number of reasons -

• There is no SD DP billing doc and nothing in the SD document flow, so there is no clear visibility between SD and FI. This makes it difficult for sales people to track the flow, especially with multiple payments.
• If there are different tax codes per item, and a sales order with many items. It can be a lot of effort to manually create the doc in FI.

The billing plan solution isn’t ideal because -

• We lose the ability to ensure final commercial invoice is only for the delivered quantity
• At the time of creating the sales order, we don’t always know if downpayments are required.

Is there a way to automatically create a DP request from an AZWA? or make the document flow more transparent?

Could we have order-related-billing for the DP requests….. and delivery-related-billing for the final commercial invoice?

Any help appreciated.

Oliver

[former_member182378 · Accepted solution]

Oliver,

My understanding is -

In some scenarios, full payment should be made before goods are delivered.

In other scenarios, the normal OTC cycle is followed.

Where full payment is done before goods are delivered, you want order-related billing.

And for other (OTC) scenarios, you want delivery-related billing.

Generally field Terms of Payment are used to convey how payment would be done.(VBKD-ZTERM)

In the same sales order, based on different Terms of Payment, different item categories can be determined. The item category would dictate if the billing is order related or delivery related.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Thanks a lot.

From a conceptual point of view I think you are right. I will try to steer the business in that direction.

Once more question, How is it possible to use the terms of payment to determine the item category?  This could be helpful. Terms of payment is not in the item category determination table?

kind regards

Oliver

[former_member182378 · Accepted solution]

Oliver,

You are correct! Terms of payment is not one of the deciding factors in determining item category, in standard SAP.

For this you have to go for enhancement (coding).

The piece of code can be written in program MV45AFZB, USEREXIT_CHECK_VBAP

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/helpdata/en/64/72369adc56d11195100060b03c6b76/frameset.htm

Further, you can have a table with Terms of payment and Item category (2 fields), the logic shall go to this table, and pick up the item category depending upon the terms of payment; during the processing of a sales order.

Further, if you want to restrict this to particular sales document types, then that can also be incorporated.

The Order-related billing or delivery-related billing can be taken care in the item category, field Billing Relevance.

Also, in item category, field "Business Item" should be activated, for different payment terms (item level and header level)

[former_member184065]

Hi,

I understood you concern but SAP has provided how to see the down payment request for customer thru some transactions like by FBL5N ( in this,just keep ,your customer ,mark the radio button all items and check spcial G/L transactions then you will see document number and amount ec.If you clickon document number ,it will lead you into down payment transaction F-37 ) . In any company ,the down payment amount will be transferred to Special /L transactions in SAP.

Note:Take help from your FI guy on this.

Thanks,

Naren

[Former Member]

Hi Oliver,

What you want to put in place is called 'Pure Downpayment'. You will have a dedicated item representing the down payment. This item will be directly billed as down payment request (order-related). Other materials will be billed according to their configuration (ex. delivery-related).

Have a look at note 528608, it explains in detail how this process works. You can also checkout a presentation available at ASUG which shows how this solution has been implemented in real life: link

Hope it helps.

Bernhard

[Former Member]

Thanks Bernhard,

Very interesting SAP note. This is a similar solution to what the business are pushing us to implement from their legacy system. Didn't realize this solution was offered by an OSS note!

We are not keen on this for a couple of reasons. Since it's basically a header DP all the DP has the same tax code. It doesn't cater well for the scenario where there are different tax codes per item. User has to manually adjust the DP in FI to ensure the VAT code is matching the relevant Sales Order items.

Can you see an clean way around this problem?

In fact, in their legacy system, they do all their DP settlements manually because of issues like that.

kind regards

Oliver

[Former Member]

Hi Oliver,

You can investigate the possibility to enter several DP items in the sales order, each item with a different material tax classification. As Narendra already mentionned, you will also need to sit down with your FI guy to ensure that the settlement works.

Bernhard

[former_member182378]

Oliver,

There are few important "business process steps" that impact the use of downpayment functionality -

1.

 Sometimes after creating the sales order, a decision is made that the customer should make the full payment before the goods are delivered.

Down payment for full amount must be paid by the customer before delivery date, this can be done with billing date configuration in billing plan (DP is part of billing plan).

But some enhancement (logic) is needed to make sure that billing (DP) should be done X days before delivery date. So that the customer can make the payment before delivery date.

Further there has to be some "integration" logic, which checks whether payment is done by the customer only then say PGI is done (or something...)

At the time of creating the sales order, we don’t always know if downpayments are required.

During creation of the sales order, it should be known whether down payment is applicable or not.

The reason being either a dedicated sales document type or a dedicated item category is to be selected - when downpayment is applicable.

Some other sales doc type, item category has to be used, if downpayment is not applicable.

2.

Normally we use delivery related billing. 

As you know, downpayment is done with order related billing and not with delivery related billing.

Important at this juncture is to know (by the business) during order creation whether down payment is applicable for an order or not.

Kindly comment.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Yes I agree with you. During my sandbox testing and my meetings I realized these will sticking points. 

The business don't always know that pre-payment is required at the time they create the sales order. For an unprocessed sales order it would have been OK, it's still possible to change the item category on an unprocessed line item with a bit of fiddling.

Unfortunately it's worse than that -  Sometimes they reach this decision after some follow-on processes have begun, (eg MRP,  purchasing or even delivery doc). This means that they would have to delete these docs in order to change to a Billing Plan item category. Something which they are not willing to do.

For this case I think we will have to give the business what they originally requested, which is a dedicated item representing a down payment.

thanks a lot for your comments and suggestions.

Oliver