Trying to manage Accounts Receivable balances in R/3 can often be a rather difficult task, particularly when customers don’t pay their Total Amount Due. Let’s face it. Not too many of us are blessed with customers who always pay all of what they’re supposed to (e.g., what they actually owe) as opposed to what they think they should pay.

So, A/R and Credit groups need a way of tracking short or partial payments, and documenting what actions have been and are being taken.

To help you gain control of complex resolution issues, SAP’s Global Solution Center provides a targeted product called the Deduction Management Component. This product is a "bolt on" component that enhances the functionality of the SAP R/3 Accounts Receivable module.

When added to your SAP R/3 system, the Deduction Management Component allows you to track, interpret, record, and manage the life of your A/R documents or accounts through the addition of the following four functions:

• Credit/Debit Offset: This function links follow-on transactions of an invoice — partial payments, returns, subsequent price adjustments, etc. — to their original A/R.

• A/R Document Flow: Similar to the Document Flow function in the SD module, this function enables a user, from within the display of an invoice, to click on a button and see the date, current status, and dollar amount of all the related upstream and downstream activities of the invoice (see Figure 1 for an example).

• Document Owners: This function assigns one or more specific employees to an individual A/R. These assignments are easily viewable from within the display of the A/R invoice, and also carry over automatically to related downstream data entry updates, such as an applied partial payment.

• Notes Tickler: This function records any action (such as a customer contact) that needs to be taken against an open item, the action’s priority, and/or a status update to an earlier-recorded action item (see Figure 2 for an example).

  This function also comes with standard reports that allow an employee to generate "To Do" lists and "Document" lists that show which actions have been assigned to him or her.

The Deduction Management Component add-on was developed in the SAP ABAP programming language as an extension of the core SAP R/3 system. It is compatible with SAP R/3 releases 3.1H to 4.6C and available for all operating systems and database combinations supported by R/3.

To learn more about the Deduction Management Component and other Global Solution Center offerings, inside the U.S. call (866) 633-3413, or internationally call +49-6227-747474.

A full-text article on complete Deduction Management Component functionality is available at the bottom of this article. You can also obtain detailed information on this functionality from https://www.sap.com/globalsolutioncenter or https://service.sap.com/globalsolutioncenter (SAP Service Marketplace).

Figure 1

Example of the "A/R Document Flow" Function

Figure 2

Example of the "Notes/Tickler" Function

Click here to download the full article on the Deduction Management Component.