Payments Advice in S/4 HANA (On-premise)

In a recent post, I was talking about how to do physical checks payments the right way in S/4. Now in this one, I will show you how to generate Payment Advices in S/4 HANA. If you read my previous post, if not you should, you will know that the Tab "printout / data medium" has been removed and it just does not exists in the Fiori App "Manage Automatic Payments" which replaces Tcode F110. So another drawback of this, is the lack of possibility to select your Program Variant to issue your Payment Advice.

But ... there is no PMW (Payment Medium Workbench) solution for this as we have for Checks. In this case SAP has "hardcoded" it (literally) in the Fiori App "Manage Automatic Payments" to look for a specific Variant Name under program RFFOAVIS_FPAYM. If you do not have this Variant in your system, no matter what you do and try, your Payment Advices will not be generated.

Up until version 1809 FPS01, you needed to create this Program Variant manually. Now they woke up and they included it out-of-the-box. So if you are working on 1610, 1709 or initial 1809 chances are that you were (or are) missing this Variant. If you have it, it might mean that someone created it already.

Variant name required and "hardcoded" is: PAYM_LC

There is even an OSS Note (2690678 - Manage Automatic Payments: Cannot Print or Send Payment Advices) that SAP released that explains the issue and what you have to do.

Reference OSS Note:

2690678 - Manage Automatic Payments: Cannot Print or Send Payment Advices

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2690678

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

How to do (print) physical Checks with SAP S/4 HANA the new / right way !

For many of us that have been around for a while in the SAP Finance world, designing Checks is a constant on every project. I lost count how many Checks I have designed and implemented over the last 11 years, but I can tell you, I know quite a bit about it and have done it many times. I have designed Checks for Small, Medium and Large companies in Canada and in the US too. (For you guys in Europe, Checks are something of the past since 2014 and the introduction of SEPA, lucky you !).

I am also writing this as I have been asked several times by different colleagues on how this should be done in S/4 HANA as not a lot of Consultants know this already and have upgraded their skills to S/4.

So ... As many of you know by now (if not you should not be doing SAP anymore), things have changed in S/4 HANA (for the better) compared to the tools and ways of implementing Checks in ECC6.0 and before.

Developers have new tools to design FORMs like Adobe Forms with Adobe Lifecycle Designer that you should use instead of the old SAPScript. It is lot easier, faster, more user friendly and gives you a lot of flexibility to implement custom code.

So ... now, How should you be doing checks in S/4 HANA the new and right way ?

There are a couple of things that you should consider now in S/4 HANA. By now, you should not be deploying anymore the old SAP GUI logon Pad. There are certain exceptions, but you should deliver the new UI which is SAP Fiori. With that it comes a lot of new Apps that have been built for Finance. Among those you will find "Manage Automatic Payments" that replaces to old Automatic Payment Program Tcode F110. 

The new "Manage Automatic Payments" App is more user friendly, more intuitive and have lost several of the technical non-sense things that an end-user needed to select in order to issue Payments in SAP. I never understood why they made it so complicated for the end user (well it's SAP ...). 

Now the Tab "Printout/data medium" is gone from the Fiori App, you do not have access anymore to that Tab. It just does not exist in Fiori such an option to select what variants you will be using for each program. Instead you should be using the new Standard delivered Payment Medium Workbench (PMW) CHECK.

You cannot use anymore the old and traditional program RFFOUS_C (or any similar variant of it). Also, you cannot use the traditional Funds Transfer / Electronic payment program RFFOUS_T and you should be using the PMW and build a DMEE for Electronic Funds Transfer instead.  This is "IF" you want to use the new Fiori App, if you don't and you still want to use the old F110, then those programs will still work in S/4 HANA. But why would you want to keep on using it if you have a new one ? Would you keep driving your old car with no AC, no power windows and no power steering wheel ? Well, I don't !!!

Not long ago, I went into a client who was running S/4 (greenfield implementation) and saw that they were using the traditional RFFOUS_C Print program. In fact, they took a copy of the program and they customized and put their own code inside it. This is something that we all used to do in the old ECC days, but we should not do this anymore. (See below what we should not do anymore).

Unless you have a compelling technical reason for using the old Print Program, then I see this as poor knowledge and lack of skills from the Consultant that implemented this solution. Which it wouldn't be the first time I see someone that lacks the technical knowledge doing something like this ...

 

As I mentioned before, YOU SHOULD STOP USING RFFOUS_C and start using the new SAP Standard delivered Payment Medium Workbench CHECK to be able to print Checks.

Another thing you should STOP doing is using SAPScript to design your Check Form layout. The new way in S/4 and new tool is Adobe Forms (not Smartforms). SAP Delivers a Standard form that you should take as a reference and design your own as per your business requirements. 

Adobe Lifecycle Designer will allow your Developer to meet 100% of your Business requirements Layout and add any type of custom code needed to retrieve any extra information that could be required to be printed in the form that is not yet available . No more copying the Standard program and modifying it so then the SAPScript form has access to new information. That is not needed anymore with this new technology. A good and up-to-date Abaper will know what I am talking about. (It is not the purpose of this post to explain that and I am not an Abaper either).

After you have configured the use of the Payment Medium Workbench CHECK and have developed your custom Adobe Form, you should add it in the configuration. After that your config should not have this setup anymore.

In the line "Form for the Payment Medium" you should select PDF and enter your PDF Form name there instead of SAPScript.

After that you need to configure your Variants in Transaction OBPM4.

There you will create a Variant which will allow you to select your Check Printer among some other things.

As you can see, it is not complicated, you just have to know how to do it and your SAP Finance Consultant should have up to date knowledge too.

I am putting as a reference 2 OSS Notes that explain part of this new setup and gives you a possibility of using the Old programs if you still want. But I would not recommend it, it is not the way to go these days and I suspect that eventually SAP could close that door in subsequent versions.

Note: The described procedure and screens belong to S/4 HANA On-premise.

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com

Reference OSS Notes:

2794915 - No "Printout/data medium" tab in "Manage Automatic Payments"

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2794915

2418837 - Manage Automatic Payments: Add Support for Classic Payment Medium Programs

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2418837

SAP AP / AR standard Aging reports - out of the box easy

For the ones that have been around in the SAP world for quite some years like me, there has been a constant ask from customers to get an Aging report out of ECC or even S/4 like other systems have. One that would show you Customer / Vendor one-by-one with their total AP/AR and a break it down by due dates for 0-30 days, 31-60, 61-90 and so on ... Many legacy systems have this type of report and it is a must have for any AP or AR Manager to have one. Somehow this has never been the case for SAP to have it out of the box.
You can do something "similar" by using FBL1N for Vendor Line items and FBL5N for Customer line items where you will get document by document with the corresponding due Date or Arrears. But you cannot get buckets like 0,30,60,90, etc. out of it.
In the past, I have seen projects even building these reports in BW (BI later and in today's language Analytics). Another way also, was to have Custom built drill-down report (with Report Painter) to achieve this too, using AP and AR libraries.
But since SAP ECC6.0 EHP5 (and higher of course), the answer to this requirement comes out of the box. It is part of a package of reports and transactions that have been delivered to meet certain legal requirements for China. But who says that you cannot use them for any other country ? They work just fine, have no restrictions and of course they are not written in Chinese (otherwise I would not be able to read them).
The AP/AR Aging report Transaction Codes are IDCNAP and IDCNAR respectively. They are 2 separate Tcodes, but they are almost identical one another. Their principle is just the same. One of the main differences is in the selection screen of the AR Aging report, you can choose / filter by certain SD criteria like Sales Org., Distribution Channel, Division, Sales District and Sales Document.

AP Aging report (IDCNAP)

The report selection screen allows you to run the report by CoCode, Vendor, Profit Center (which for many Companies is important for AR/AP splitting thanks to Document Splitting) and some other indicators. The most important thing, you will find it at the bottom under "Due Date Sorter List". This options are the ones that will allow you to build your own Aging buckets (Ex 0-30, 31-60, 61-90 and so on ...). There is the option of building up to 8 buckets, which is way more than what any normal company would ever need. Once you setup those buckets, you execute it and you will get the data Aging built and split that way.
If you close the Transaction and come back, those bucket will not stay; so that is why I recommend you to build a Selection Variant so you do not have to enter the buckets every time.

AR Aging report (IDCNAR)

This is the AR Aging report with the added option of entering SD Data filtering by SD Organizational Structure criteria.

If you need, you also have "Dynamic Selection" criteria which gives you more selection capabilities.
Once you execute the reports, your output will look like this.

For confidentiality reasons, I am masking the Client Names and other Customer specific data.

Standard, right after execution, it comes with quite a few different subtotals (way to many for me), but it is just a matter of clicking in "Subtotal On/Off" Icon to remove it.

Once done your report will look a lot better.

As you can see you get CoCode, Credit Segment, Profit Center, of course Customer, Reconciliation Account, Total Open item, Amount Not due and then your Aging buckets as per your selection criteria. You also get a percentage calculation of that "bucket" in regards to the grand total, which you can easily remove if you don't like by changing the column layout.

As per extra columns that you can get in the layout, you already get pretty much everything, but you can also add Company Code Name and Credit Control Area.

Once the report out, you can sort up/down, filter anyway you want as with any other SAP report that has an ALV output. You can also do drill-down by double-clicking on any AR/AP bucket and you will get the exact line items that make up that amount.

So as you can see, this is the Aging report that many Customers have been asking for many years and for an unknown reason (at least to me ...), it was never built in SAP out of the box.

As I mentioned, both reports AP/AR are pretty much identical and behave the same. Different program names, but for what I could see in the code, similar program structures underneath.

The reports mention China, but there is nothing specific that will not make them applicable or usable for any other country. I have personally use them already in Canadian and US clients without any issues or limitations.

Where can you find these reports in the SAP Menu ?
They are buried inside the Country specific functions / reports for China in Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable Menu area.

Accounts Payable Menu

Accounts Receivable Menu

If your Company and/or Project needs to implement this, or any of the functionalities described in my Blog, or advise about them, do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will be happy to provide you my services.

www.dnabusinessconsulting.com