In the order to payment cycle, a SAP sales and distribution consultant comes across integration to finance and accounting on few occasions. Once such point is when you create the invoice and it gets released to accounting. Another is when incoming payment is posted.
Sometimes, if account determination is not set properly, you can get an error mentioning that a billing document is not posted. Let’s understand what happens when a billing document is posted to accounting. When a billing document is posted, it passes the accounting entries into the respective G/L accounts. For example, on posting of a new invoice , your books reflect the correct account receivables.
Switching on Automatic Posting of Billing Document to Accounting
Whenever you define a billing document in SAP, you can define whether it needs to be posted automatically to accounting. This gets defined in the following path in SPRO – Sales and Distribution -> Billing -> Billing Documents -> Define Billing Types. As you can see, if the flag showed is checked then the user needs to release the billing document to accounting manually.
In case you choose not to post automatically, you have to open the billing document in change mode and click on release to accounting as shown in the picture below.
Simulating G/L Account determination during billing document creation
If you want to check which accounts are going to be posted to, you can go to Environment -> Account Determination Analysis and simulate the posting.
The above determination happens based on the settings maintained in transaction VKOA. It uses condition technique and determination happens based on most specific to generic condition records set up in this transaction. Usually the first level determination is on Customer Group / Material group / Accounting Key. If the determination fails, then it looks for Customer group and Account Key, followed by Material Group / Account Key.
When you drill down among the above accesses, you will be able to see the G/L Account which will get determined. This is shown above.
Invoice not cleared – What does it mean?
Now we will come to the issue that sometimes we get a message that a billing document has not been cleared. This has a totally different meaning than a case where a billing document has not been posted. Once the billing document is successfully released to accounting, the next logical step is to get the customer payment. The entries here will offset the account receivables posted at the time of invoice posting.
For this to be done, the incoming payment can be posted using F-28 transaction. To be able to successfully do this, you would need the following details.
- Company Code
- The customer number for which the billing document is created.
- Amount to be paid including tax.
- Currency of the billing document.
- Bank Account where this amount is posted.
- Accounting Document Number
- Any clearing text you may have
When you provide the information above and click on “Process Open Item” on the top, it will list out all the billing documents which are not cleared in the system. You can select the line item and save which will clear the billing document.
The following points may however be noted.
- It is possible to clear more than one billing document in one shot.
- You can also clear a billing document partially.
Implication of Accounting Document Posting in Integration
When a billing document is created, it does not send information to third party applications until it has been released to accounting. This is so because default SAP does not consider mere creation of billing document in the system as a sufficient parameter to trigger the IDOCs. It needs to be also reflect in your books. Look at the below screenshot. You can see that there is a requirement 62 for communication of the IDOCs.
For example, default output type RD00 relies on a requirement that the billing document must be successfully posted to accounting. This is also shown in picture above.
Further recommendations on resolving accounting document not posted error
If you are having a problem in posting a billing document, following is the recommended step by step approach you can take.
#1 Simulate the account determination as shown in the earlier section of this article. See that all the accounts are getting determined. If account determination is failing, you need to maintain the condition records for the same.
#2 Release accounting document manually. If there are any errors double-click on it. Most of the errors for example related to costing are rare but also very elaborate, giving path for maintaining the appropriate details.
Once you are able to overcome these issues, you would be able to click on accounting document button and see the success accounting document. Good Luck!