8.7 The Interface Between Sales and Financial Accounting, Billing Output, and Technical Options

The Interface Between Sales and Financial Accounting, Billing Output, and Technical Options

When a billing document is saved, Sales and Distribution hands the commercial result to Financial Accounting. The S46150 unit Describing the Interface Between Sales and Distribution and Financial Accounting explains the settings that shape this hand-over, and the course appendix adds the output and technical options that billing specialists use. Account determination itself is covered in section 8.6.

Link to Financial Accounting

The system transfers the billing data of invoices, credit memos, and debit memos to Financial Accounting and posts them to the correct accounts. Until the accounting document has been created, you can still change the following data in the billing document:

• Billing date
• Pricing
• Account determination
• Output determination data

After the billing document has been released to accounting, these changes are no longer possible.

Posting Block

Normally, the accounting data is transferred automatically. For certain billing types you might not want this, so you set a posting block for the billing type. The accounting documents are then generated only after you release the billing documents. This lets you create the billing documents first, print them, and transfer them to Financial Accounting later, which can also improve system performance. The course adds a key detail: the system generates all or none of the accounting documents. If the posting block is active, or if errors occurred in account determination, no controlling documents are created either; nothing is posted until the block is removed or the error corrected.

Reference Numbers and Assignment Numbers

Copying control for billing documents decides which number is transferred to accounting as reference number and as assignment number. The number types are:

These numbers help accounts receivable match incoming payments to open items, for example when customers quote their purchase order number. For invoice lists, billing documents are first created and posted with their own reference numbers; when the invoice list is created, the invoice list's reference number overwrites the reference numbers of the individual billing documents, so incoming payments can be posted with the invoice list number (section 8.4).

Transaction-Related Document Types

Financial Accounting distinguishes documents by document type, stored in the document header. Without further settings, the system gives all SD billing documents the FI document type RV. In the Document type field of the billing type, you can maintain a different document type for each billing type. This enables differentiated evaluations and separate number assignment in Financial Accounting; if the field is empty, RV continues to be transferred.

Head Office and Branches

A head office and its branches can be represented with SD partner functions (for example, a branch as sold-to party and the head office as payer) or with the Head office field in the accounting segment of the customer master. Previously, the accounting segment had to be maintained for both customers; if accounting data was missing for the branch, billing documents could be created but not transferred to accounting.

The Branch/Head office field in the billing type controls which partner function in the billing document is transferred to Financial Accounting, that is, whether the sold-to party or the payer is entered as the customer of the accounting document. If the field is left blank, the system ignores the relationship stored in the accounting Head office field. For all other settings, the relationship stored in Financial Accounting has priority over the SD partner functions.

Negative Postings

In the standard system, cancellations and credit memos are posted on the opposite side of the customer account from the receivable. The account totals then show sales on both sides, so the total is greater than zero even though nothing was sold. Some customers require credit memos and cancellations to post on the same side as the receivable, so the totals line can return to zero.

To do this, activate the Negative posting field for the billing types for credit memos and cancellations. The information is transferred through the FI/CO interface. Two limitations from the course:

• The setting changes only the display of open items and account totals; it has no effect on processes in Financial Accounting.
• Negative postings happen only if they are permitted for the company code.

Value-Dated Credit Memos

For credit memos, the billing type can control whether a credit memo is posted with its own value date, so it becomes due on that date in accounting instead of following the payment terms that would otherwise apply.

Output Management for Billing Documents

In SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Output Management is used for billing documents by default. The classic NAST approach can be enabled again with a specific Customizing parameter (SAP Note 2267376). Output Management is the strategic framework, and future developments are made only there. Adobe XFA is the default form technology, but SAPscript, Smart Forms, and Adobe Forms are still supported. The course names its main benefits:

• Extensibility through broad use of CDS views
• BRFplus for flexible output parameter determination
• One solution across SD, MM, FIN, and other applications
• Full SAP Fiori integration
• State-of-the-art email support with multiple recipients and templates

Compared with NAST, Output Management supports only the print, email, XML, and IDoc (on premise) channels by default. Decision tables with condition columns and result columns determine the output type, receiver, channel, printer settings, and form template; rows are processed top to bottom, so the most specific conditions should come first, and tables can be exported to and imported from Microsoft Excel (sections 9.6 and 9.7).

The General Billing Interface

Besides the Create Billing Documents app with its omnichannel approach (EBDRs), the general billing interface remains available. It lets you invoice external documents, such as orders and deliveries not created in the SAP system. You prepare the data in a sequential file in a specified format, fill a minimum of required fields (for example, the customer master and the sales organization), and supply the remaining fields from the file or let the system determine them (optional fields, for example material master and price components). You can include external reference numbers such as external delivery or order numbers.

Flexible Billing Document Numbering and Prefixes

With the filter-enabled BAdI SD_BIL_FLEX_NUMBERING, newly created billing documents of a billing type can be assigned to custom number range intervals and, optionally, number range prefixes, depending on header fields of the billing document. Example from the course: a corporation with companies in eight countries uses interval G1 for F2 invoices of the German company and interval F1 for those of the French company, to satisfy country-specific legal numbering requirements. Prefixes of up to five characters can be combined with the intervals: prefix ABC with interval 0000001-9999999 can produce billing document number ABC1234567. Prefixes open new number spaces (for example, prefix AB with the same limits as interval 19 doubles the available numbers) and make documents recognizable, such as DE for German and FR for French documents.