Benefits of Using Payment scheme over other Budget Billing programs.

[Former Member]

Hi,

In my current project we are exploring various option of budget billing provided by SAP. I would like to have your expert advice on the same.

The requirement is to implementing budget billing without impacting Billing/ meter reading schedule.

There are customer with monthly ,bimonthly & quarterly billing but they should be able to make payments weekly, fortnightly,monthly.

I would like to know If we implement standard Payment Scheme option provided by SAP whether it will impact billing /meter reading schedule.

It will be gr8 if some can tell pros & cons of implementing payment scheme option.

[Former Member]

Hello,

BB is a very big concept as you know....most of the times you have to tune your business requirements on to customized function modules.....A PS frequency can be as follows:

W Weekly

F Every 2 weeks

M Monthly

B Every Two Months

Q Quarterly

H Half-Yearly

Y Annually

There is no hard and fast rules to conclude which one is better.

The most important thing is the Asessment where you determine the next BB amount. SAP allows yearly assessment...but if your requirement is other wise <say half yearly or qrtly assessment>, you have to enhance Events R510/R512/R513.

Ultimately everything depends on your business requirement say

1. PS should always be monthly

2. PS should be active only when DD details are available in the contract account

3.Payments due date should not be too far

4.Assessment should be half-year as well as annual

5.Correspondence shuld be triggered during

a) PS Setup

b)PS Termination

c)DD Return

d)New PS amount

My experience is that it is very difficult to suggest alternatives to the Business..we can only tune SAP to the business needs...so it is not eas to say which one is correct/right/easy unless your requirement is clear.

If you want to make your PS as simple as possible, you can use the standard PS functionality provided by SAP.

Hope this helps

Rgds

Rajendra

[Former Member]

Hi Rajendra,

Thanks for the timely reply. I have a doubt regarding budget billing and payment scheme. I do not seem to understand the difference between these two plans.

Can you explain the differencess between budget billing and payment scheme, where payment plan is preferred over the other and so on.

I have worked extensively on budget billing, and little bit on payment scheme.

Regards,

Arun.

[Former Member]

Hi Arun,

As you are aware, A utility company does not normally bill its services until the end of a supply period. Throughout the current period, it therefore charges budget billing amounts instead of the actual amount owed,

We can use several budget billing procedures. Each of these have different ways of determining budget billing dates and amounts, managing budget billing data and posting procedures.

· Statistical budget billing procedure

· Partial bill procedure

· Payment plan procedure

· Payment scheme

Hope this helps

Rgds

Rajendra

points!!!

[Former Member]

Hi Rajendra,

In our system, we have payment plan scheme implemented in two forms.

1. Equal Pay plan: This is a std plan where previous 12 months bill amount is summed, and divided by 12 and we come up with the paymwent plan amount.

2. Levelized plan: Here we have bill amount of previous 11 months + current month's consp, this is then divided by 12.

The difference between actual bill amount and payment plan amount is accumulated till the plan is terminated. This is customized, logic is present in R950 event.

Now I guess payment scheme is also same as levelized bill, with more enhanced features such as corespondence, automatically adjustting or re-calculating the payment scheme amount based on difference found during interim billing.

Now my doubt goes further. I used to think payment scheme is specially designed for UK utilities companies where the cost involved for taking meter reads is very high. Thus meter reads are taken only once in six months and billing is also carried out once in six months.

1. If this is the case, then do we skip periodic billing?

2. How are the scheduled records maintained in this case?

3. Or is it like meter reads are taken every month, but periodic billing is not done?

Regards,

Arun.

Edited by: jyoti shankar on May 29, 2008 2:23 PM

[Former Member]

Hello Arun,

You have very good knowledge in PS.....I do not think I'd be able to answer all your quality Qs.

Yes!!..you are right...PS was developed mainly for UK Utilities cos. I did heard/knew that one of the Utility Co has raised Development request with SAP for many functionalities which were not existing in ISU & FICA..PS was one among them.

OK

1. If this is the case, then do we skip periodic billing?

Do not think so. We used to have monthly billed customers/Quarterly billed customers.....requirement is that to have Assessment to be done for every 6m & 12m. For this we have customized events R510/R512/R513

For 2 & 3 what all I can tell is that, we have divided our customers in monthy customers and Quarterly customers. We have enhanced table EABP with an Addl field. So when ever there is a bill, this table gets updated with M1,M2,M3...M6....M11,M12 for monthly customers..similarly for Quarterly customers, the table gets updated with Q1,Q2,Q3 & Q4. So assessment is triggered when the status is M6 & M12 for monthly customers and for Quarterly customers it is triggred during Q2 & Q4.

Ofcourse as you are aware, from meter reading unit installation customer is identified whether Monthly or Quarterly

Hope this helps

Rgds

Rajendra

[Former Member]

So you mean to say that billing and invoicing is carried out every month as usual, but the customer pays according to the payment scheme amount.

I have also read somewhere that current billing amount can also be used to calculate the payment scheme amount and that payment scheme amount can be different every month based on current month's bill amount.

In payment plan: If a customer is enrolled on any payment plan scheme, an entry is created in table EABP (same process as payment scheme). While invoicing, the system picks, the payment plan amount, uses this as print doc header amount, the difference (i.e. actual amount - payment plan) is posted with restriction 3 on account. Thus here, assesment can be done every month and incase difference is out of limit, payment plan amount can be re-calculated or workflow can be triggered or whatever.

Now can you explain the payment scheme process. If billing and invoicing is carried out normally, why is the concept of interim bill introduced. Or is it like only when M6 bill is being executed, the exit for re-assesment is carried out.

I know i am getting deeper into this topic but I do not have any material on payment scheme, nor am I able to find any significant differencess betwen the two plans.

[Former Member]

Hello,

PFA my answers below:

So you mean to say that billing and invoicing is carried out every month as usual, but the customer pays according to the payment scheme amount.

Yes! for monthly customers.

While invoicing, the system picks, the payment plan amount, uses this as print doc header amount, the difference (i.e. actual amount - payment plan) is posted with restriction 3 on account. Thus here, assesment can be done every month and incase difference is out of limit, payment plan amount can be re-calculated or workflow can be triggered or whatever.

But in PS the items are created with clearing restriction 'R'. As per standard SAP, Assessment can only be Annual for PS. But as the requirement was for both Half-yrly & Yrly, we have customized events R510/R512/R513. We did have W/f.

Now can you explain the payment scheme process. If billing and invoicing is carried out normally, why is the concept of interim bill introduced. Or is it like only when M6 bill is being executed, the exit for re-assesment is carried out.

Pls look above. Business needs Assessment Half-yrly as well as Yrly.

Hope this helps

Rgds

Rajendra