Posting Accounts Receivable

Documents, Headers and Posting Keys

One of the most basic components of SAP is the document. Whenever data is entered into the system a document is created. Documents have a definite structure to them. This structure varies depending on the purpose of the transaction. Each document has a unique number and also contains a complete trace of the transaction entered and who entered it.


The next screen shows the structure of a document. Each document has a header and at least two items. The document header contains general data about the entire document such as:, the posting data, document type and the user that entered the document. Each item must contain a posting key, an account number and an amount. There must be at least two items and the items must balance out to zero, thus assuring that debits equal credits and the books remain balanced. Selection of the document type in the header will determine what is requested to comlete the document. All of this is controlled by the IMG which sets up the transactions

Posting keys may seem mysterious to non-accountants. The term is only a reference to a standardized way that transactions will be entered. In most business the majority of transactions adding amounts to accounts receivable will occur automatically as goods are shipped and are not entered by persons manually. Likewise when customer payments are processed the depositing of cash will automatically generate documents that will post to the customer account. Shipments of goods are simpler in that most of these shipments will result in the creation of a new item in the customer's account. Payment receipts must be processed to assure that the payments made by the customers are applied against the open items designated by the customer. This last task results in a lot of human intervention.
Payment terms: The assignment of a customer to an account group will automatically. This information is part of customer master data and is originally assigned by SD.

Retrieving Account Data

Balance Display and Line Item Display

Why would you want to look at account data? If you only need to see how much is owed then balance display is enough and it is simple. If you know that you need to search for things in the items within an account then you can display the line items. Now there can be a lot of data in the account so to control what you want to see and the presentation format you can define Variants and save them like personal formats. Once the items are displayed you can drill down to see the underlying data all the way down to the originating document by simply double clicking on the questioned data element. This is one of the most powerful tools for maintaining financial records. You can print the document or export the data to EXCEL for further analysis. You can use work lists to work with groups of accounts.

Account Analysis

Salesperson and other company employees need current information about customers. Predefined account analysis can be selected from the menu to show balances, detail on open items, credit limits and payment history.

SD and Financial Accounting Integration

A key feature of an enterprise data system such as SAP is integration of function where events occurring in the system cause accounting entries to be made automatically when the events happen. This means that there is no lag between events and the books.

To facilitate this process SAP uses this basic method:

• The account key determines the type of price and discount calculation made
• The type of sales revenue posting to feed data into profitability analysis
• The customer master record is the source for data
• The material master record is the source for data on what was shipped from inventory