In the past, if you wanted to propose to clear open items in the Accounts Receivable module from a customer's account by netting invoices with credits, you would, for example, have to download the open items into Excel from either a report or a query, sorting and manipulating the ones you wanted to net. This would typically be a time- consuming analytical process to make sure you found all the open items. You would then correspond with the customer proposing this netting and wait for the reply. Once a reply was received, and assuming the proposal was accepted, you would have to go back into the system and reselect all the open items previously identified. You did double work just by having to look for the open items again.

New functionality available since Release 4.6C called assignment of open items enhances this process by allowing you to save the work you have done to identify what you want to clear or net. The results are retrievable so you can pull them up at a later point. This differs from traditional clearing methods (e.g., using transaction F- 32), which do not allow you to save your work before the posting. I will give you two business scenarios that display the functionality and then I will look at what configuration steps are necessary.

The New Functionality

The assignment of open items functionality (transaction FB15) allows you to view all receivables, payments on account, partial payments, and credit memos on one screen (Figure 1). Users can change the screen layout with standard ABAP List Viewer (ALV) functionality. You can assign open items together and save the assignment for future use. You can download the saved assignment into MS Excel, MS Word, Business Objects, or Crystal Reports.

Figure 1

Assignment of open items screen via transaction FB15

You can use payment advice numbers that are generated when an assignment is saved for future use, and you can clear open items directly from this transaction. If an assignment is unbalanced (i.e., you want to clear a number of transactions that don't balance to zero), this transaction launches F-30 (transfer with clearing) to enable the clearing process. Now I'll use two scenarios to introduce this functionality.

Scenario 1: You have multiple invoices and credits that you want to assign and clear. You want to be able to save this assignment and download it to be sent to your customer. Later, you want to pull up your saved assignment and edit it before performing a clearing.

First, select all the open items you want to assign by selecting the rows on both sides of the screen. Hold down the Ctrl key to select each row in the tables. Make sure you see the whole row highlighted. Only when the whole row is highlighted have you successfully selected the row (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Both sides of the transaction showing the selected open items

Next click on the Assign button. Note that all the open items that have been assigned have been moved to the bottom of the screen under the Assigned items section (Figure 3). Note also the total at the bottom of the screen.

Figure 3

All the items selected have moved down from the top of the screen to the bottom

The red icon at the bottom left corner means that this assignment hasn't been saved. When you save this assignment, the icon turns yellow and a payment advice number is generated (Figure 4). This number allows you to retrieve this assignment in another transaction (i.e., F-30 [transfer with clearing]) if you want to edit it or make changes.

Figure 4

Icons (under Stat) mean that assignment has been saved

The confirm icon at the top of the screen only confirms a specific assignment. Since you can have more than one assignment at a time, you also have the choice of the confirm all icon, which allows for all present assignments to be confirmed. When you click on the confirm or the confirm all icon, the assignment changes status to confirmed with a green icon. Note that this is a process step and not a system requirement. You can just as easily process an assignment that has been saved (yellow icon) as you can one that has been confirmed (green icon). Figure 5 displays the assignment you just saved in a confirmed state.

Figure 5

Icons indicate the assignment has been confirmed

At this point, you can export this assignment to Excel and send it to your customer. To do this, click on the Export button and choose the application to which you want to export the assignment. Once this is done and saved, you can send it to the customer via email for review.

You now receive word back from your customer, who has requested changes. Since you can't edit the assignment without losing all your work, you use the payment advice number generated earlier and edit the assignment in transaction F-30. You enter the information shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

Select Transfer posting with clearing

Click on the Choose open items button. Enter the Account number 11 and Pmnt advice no. 0904070616430601. The payment advice number can also be selected from the drop-down box.

Click on the Process open items button. Figure 7 on the next page displays all the open items previously selected in the assignment that are already active. The outstanding balance of 2,000 is Not assigned and awaits further processing.

Figure 7

Open items are automatically selected and active

You have saved the work done previously without having to reselect all the open items again, saving a lot of rework. At this point, if the customer has asked for open items to be included or excluded from the clearing, you can use standard F-30 functionality to finalize the transaction.

Scenario 2: You have multiple invoices and credits that you want to assign and clear from your customer's account. Since the assignment nets to zero, you want to be able to clear it immediately and perform this function from the FB15 transaction. First, select the open items as before and assign them. The result of this assignment should be similar to what you see in Figure 8, with a net zero balance assignment.

Figure 8

Select and assign open items

Next click on the Assign button. The items on the top of the screen move down to the assigned area of the screen, as shown in Figure 9. Note that the assignments have been confirmed and all open items net to zero.

At this point, you can clear these open items straight from this transaction. When you click on the Clear button, this transaction launches transaction F-30 (transfer with clearing) to clear the open items and generate a cle

Figure 9

Open items net to zero

Figure 10

Select a row and click on the Clear button to enable a clearing

Figure 11

Clearing document generated

Configuration Steps

This functionality is ready virtually out of the box, and you don't have to perform a lot of configuration. Follow these two steps:

Step 1. Define the advice type. From the IMG, you can access the Define Payment Advice Types screen using menu path SAP Customizing Implementation Guide>Financial Accounting>Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable>Business Transactions>Incoming Payments>Incoming Payments Global Settings>Payment Advice Notes(Incoming)>
Define Payment Advice Types or via transaction OBCQ. Add the entry shown in Figure 12 if it's not already there.

Figure 12

Payment advice type defined

Step 2. The next step — defining the document type — is optional. When R/3 performs a clearing automatically, you can define which document type is to be used. The document type here is typically already defined, and I suggest you keep the default. However, if you ever need to change this default, you can use menu path SAP Customizing Implementation Guide> Financial Accounting>Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable>Business Transactions>Open Item Clearing>Define Posting Key for Clearing Open Items or launch transaction OBXH. Double-click on Transfer posting with clearing.

Enter the document type you want to use for the clearing (Figure 13), and you are done. Note that this document type is defaulted for transaction F-32 (clear customer) as well.

Figure 13

Enter document type for the clearing