A typical day in an organization’s Accounts Payable (AP) department includes a lot of inefficient activity. Whether it’s fielding vendors’ phone calls about unsettled payments, printing out payment advices in the SAP system and physically mailing them, or handling reprint or resend requests for payment advices, many of these actions consume employees’ time without adding any value to the organization. 

The SAPconnect service, a remote function call (RFC) interface that enables connection between the SAP system and devices such as fax machines and printers, helps solve this problem. It can automatically send out emails based on the status of different processes to keep work flowing and communication operating correctly. I explain business transaction event (BTE) functionality and then describe how some simple configuration steps and development with BTEs allow you to send payment advices through email during the payment run, which saves you both time and effort. I composed my example on a mySAP ERP 2004 system, but it works on R/3 4.6C systems with Support Package 21 and SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) 6.0 systems as well.

Overview of BTE Functionality

BTEs only work with payment methods using the Payment Medium Workbench (PMW). You execute the automatic payment run transaction for payment methods using PMW. The system automatically generates the payment advice for each vendor as a PDF and sends an email to the vendor email ID. I use BTEs to provide:

• Derivation of the vendor email ID. This isn’t always needed, but I’ll assume it is in my example. Primarily email IDs are stored in the vendor master, but sometimes these email IDs pertain to the sales group at the vendor. Because payment advices are meant for a different audience, you may have to derive them from a different place.
• A file name for the generated PDF file

To send the payment advices through email, you have to use two BTEs to address the vendor email ID and file name data listed above. Both of these belong to the process interfaces. You configure the BTEs by copying the standard function modules provided by SAP in the customer name space and then assigning these to the predefined SAP events. I use two BTEs:

• 00002040: Finds the vendor email from the vendor master (standard function). You can also use this if you want to determine a different email ID for the vendor.
• 00002050: Changes the file name for the PDF file generated

Now I show you a five-step process to automate emails using BTEs. These five steps are:

1. Create function modules
2. Assign these function modules to the events in the SAP system
3. Maintain the form (SAPscript) that you’ll use to create the payment advice
4. Set up the variant for program RFFOAVIS_FPAYM
5. Set up the SAPconnect service if it is not set up

Step 1. Create function modules. Use transaction code FIBF or follow IMG menu path Financial Accounting>Financial Accounting Global Settings>Business Transaction Events. Then follow Environment>Infosystem(Processes) (Figure 1).

Figure 1

BTE screen

Figure 2

BTEs for process interfaces

To customize the file, click 00002050 in the screen shown in Figure 2 and then click the Sample function module button to go to transaction code SE37 with function module SAMPLE_PROCESS_00002050. Copy the function module in the customer name space and save it. The field TDTITLE in structure ITCPO carries the file name. You can create your own file names using various fields from the structures available in this function module. You can see some sample code in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Sample code for file name

Figure 4

Assign the function modules

Figure 5

Step 2 in assigning the function modules

Figure 6

Form assignment

Now you are ready to use this functionality. Figure 7 shows a sample email received from SAPconnect.

Figure 7

Email with payment advice attachment

Notice the PDF file name, which is derived based on the coding shown in Figure 3. The payment advice PDF file generated with the SAPscript F110_US_AVIS appears as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8

Payment advice