Q1: What is the rule for GL accounts creation for payments? (APP and bank statement)
A: Each physical bank account should be configured as bank account in transaction FI12.
Additional technical accounts should b created in General ledger (transaction FS00). I would recommend naming them with a purpose description: cheques, transfers etc. They should have open itemsmanagement. You do not need to create separate “bank” accounts for technical GL accounts in FI12.
Bank accounts and GL account are linked to each other via special fields. You should only do this for real bank GL accounts, but not for technical ones.
As a rule, you do not need special technical accounts for bank charges and exchange rate differences. Usually bank charges are posted directly to the special GL account (Cr Bank Dr Costs or Dr/Cr Bank Cr/Dr Exchange rate difference). Of course, you can only do this if bank shows these charges and FX differences as a separate transaction type. It is very arguable if bank should put exchange rate differences into bank statement or not. Please agree with a bank that these transactions are not in the statement, if you can.
Q2: Which GL accounts should be used in Automatic Payment Program (APP) from accounting point of view? Should they be the same as for bank statement? Do I need to clear these accounts?
A: Yes! The process is precisely the same as described in the question itself. If you use APP to make a postings, then it should use the same GL accounts which will be posted from the bank statement from another side. These 2 open items (APP and EBS ones) should be cleared then. Doing this way, you can check which payments were sent to bank but not processed by it yet, or any other discrepancies etc.
Posting schema is like this:
1. APP – outgoing payment
Dr Vendor
Cr Bank technical outgoing payment
2. Bank statement
Dr Bank technical outgoing payment
Cr Bank
3. Technical account clearing
Cr Bank technical outgoing payment
Dr Bank technical outgoing payment
(Clearing document can have no line items in versions up to 5.0)
Q3: What is the best way to split technical bank accounts in GL? I understand they should be split by payment methods. But how will be distinguish domestic and international payments in bank statement? Do I need to create separate technical GL accounts for incoming and outgoing payments?
A: You should know the limit when split the technical accounts. If you cannot distinguish different payment methods in the bank statement, then it is useless to split GL accounts in APP. But you can always distinguish incoming and outgoing payments, so they should be definitely split.
Q4: Do I need to have the same document types in EBS and APP?
A: Usually you can use different document types for APP and EBS. This will help to distinguish them in the items list.
Q5: We post a payment in APP and then in EBS. Is there duplication?
A: No. Bank Statement has 1stand 2nd posting areas. You can choose whether you do second are or not. APP can only do send area, but only for payments generated by APP. There should not beduplication.
Q6: Automatic Payment Program can be configured with or without postings. What is the difference? I think that APP with postings makes more sense.
A: APP with postings is the most used variant in the Western countries. It reduces the configuration complexity because only one posting area will be necessary for the bank statement.
If you configure APP without postings, it only produces the payment order which you send you the bank. You should ask your bank to return payment order in corresponding field of the bank statement. Otherwise you will have very bad situation. Items paid with payment order can be only cleared via link to this payment order. They are not visible in clearing transactions with any other selection option.
Consecutively, if you have a choice, go for the postings option. Unfortunately, Russian accountants are not very flexible in these terms and prefer to make a posting on the basis of bank statement. That is why in Russia you have to configure APP without postings.
Q7: House banks are the banks in which our company has bank accounts for incoming and outgoing payments. What should I do with other bank data? Do I need to maintain all the banks which are used by our vendors and customers? I heard that I need to specify bank data in the vendor or customer master record if I want to process APP correctly. Does it mean I need to maintain all the banks of our customers and vendors?
A: House banks are the banks in which our company holds the accounts. You maintain thses house bank accounts in transaction FI12.
There are also banks of our partners. You can maintain them in transaction FI02. In general, you get bank data maintenance screen (analogue of FI02) from the customer or vendor master record when specify combination of bank country and bank key which does not exist yet. System will ask you about the name, SWIFT code etc.
You have to maintain bank master data only for those payment methods which are paid directly to the bank account of our partner. Not all the payment methods require this. For example, you can draw a cheque without bank details of payee. But most of modern payment methods require bank data. It means we need to think about bank master data maintenance.
Of course, you create any GL account (normal or technical) only for our own bank accounts in house banks.
It is slightly confusing that both bank account and GL account are called “account”, but this is terminology we use.
Q8: We have non-standard situation with bank accounts. We have 2 house banks (A and B) with 3 bank accounts: one account in bank A and two accounts in bank B. First account in bank B is used for normal payments. Second account in bank B is only technical. There are no direct transactionson this account. Balance of bank accounts in bank B is zero at the end of each day. Full available balance of first account automatically transfers to second account, and then from there to the account in bank A. The account in bank A is also use for normal payments. How can I configure this in SAP?
A: SAP will not be able track the balance of the bank account. We can only see the movements in the bank statement which is issued post-factum. Usually you agree with the bank all the automatic money movements, including zero-balancing. These agreements have nothing to do with SAP.
All the transfers between bank accounts for SAP are just transfers between main and technical bank accounts in General Ledger.
Q9: What is Direct Debit? How should I process it?
A: Direct Debit is a transaction when vendor automatically withdraws money from customer bank account for the goods or services sold. It is widely used in the Western countries, especially for communal payments, instalments, municipal and tax payments. Russian analogue is Payment Request which is not in common use.
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