The other day a user posed a question regarding some open dispute cases. Dispute cases are documents in the Dispute Management module within the FSCM (Financial Supply Chain Management) area of SAP. A dispute case allows for capturing of information regarding short paid invoices or stated dispute of payment of an invoice by a customer. When a dispute case is created against an invoice it remains in an "open" status until the open receivable amount is either paid in full or the open amount is written off.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
With the background and information above the end user's question was about a handful of dispute cases still in an open status although the receivables had been cleared from the customers' accounts. The closing of a dispute case when a receivables document is cleared is an automatic process. No batch job is needed and no manual steps by an end-user are required. BUT in these few cases it wasn't occurring as expected.
SOLUTION:
The issue boiled down to the Posting Key being used to clear the receivable. A Posting Key is an indicator assigned to every financial line item entry made to the Finance module. The Posting Key defines whether the line item is a Debit or Credit entry and what account type can be used (Customer, Vendor, G/L Account, Assets, Material). In addition there are Other Attributes available and this is where we find our solution. The Payment Transaction checkbox is used to tell the Dispute Management module that the entry made is a payment, thus clearing the dispute case automatically.
There are multiple menu paths to view the configuration settings of Posting Key within the IMG (implementation management guide) or SPRO transaction, but for this posting please refer to the path shown below or use transaction OB41 directly.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
With the background and information above the end user's question was about a handful of dispute cases still in an open status although the receivables had been cleared from the customers' accounts. The closing of a dispute case when a receivables document is cleared is an automatic process. No batch job is needed and no manual steps by an end-user are required. BUT in these few cases it wasn't occurring as expected.
SOLUTION:
The issue boiled down to the Posting Key being used to clear the receivable. A Posting Key is an indicator assigned to every financial line item entry made to the Finance module. The Posting Key defines whether the line item is a Debit or Credit entry and what account type can be used (Customer, Vendor, G/L Account, Assets, Material). In addition there are Other Attributes available and this is where we find our solution. The Payment Transaction checkbox is used to tell the Dispute Management module that the entry made is a payment, thus clearing the dispute case automatically.
There are multiple menu paths to view the configuration settings of Posting Key within the IMG (implementation management guide) or SPRO transaction, but for this posting please refer to the path shown below or use transaction OB41 directly.
Posting Keys in general are not visible and are hidden at the time of data entry which is by design by SAP. For example, if you go into transaction FB50 it is already assumed that you are making a General Ledger entry and the debits and credits entries you will make will be to posting keys 40 and 50. These are configured to each respective transaction and don't require a user to determine them outside of selecting the Debit or Credit on each line item. |
So in looking at Posting Key 40 it is configured to be a Debit entry for G/L Accounts (as shown below). Also note that the Payment Transaction check-mark is blank and was the root cause of the issue described above.
Posting Keys can be added and viewed on a number of line item reports and document display screens for most areas of the Finance module. Just update your report layout to include it in the output.