SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

3334115 - Reference information from Sales Documents to Financial Accounting Documents - S/4HANA Cloud

Symptom

There are missing information which references Sales or Billing Documents on Accounting Documents properly in your process flow.

Environment

SAP S/4HANA Cloud All versions.

Cause

The system can automatically forward the relevant billing data from billing documents to financial accounting. In short, the system does the following:

  1. Posts offsetting entries to the appropriate accounts (correct accounts are identified through revenue account determination)
  2. Ensures that financial accounting can recognize all billing documents belonging to a given business transaction (for example, that a credit memo is associated with certain invoice) through use of the assignment number, reference number, or both

When you create and post a billing document, the system automatically creates all relevant journal entries needed for reporting by the following:

  • Account
  • Profit center
  • Market segment
  • Controlling (CO) account assignment

Resolution

Reference Number and Assignment Number

It's important that financial accounting can recognize that certain billing documents belong to the same business transaction. These documents are combined for this purpose.

Incoming payments may refer to a specific number (such as a customer purchase order number). For clearing purposes, this number can be used to find the relevant document quickly.

Also, if there are any cancellations or credit memos that are created on the basis of an invoice, it's important for financial accounting to be able to recognize that these billing documents belong to the same business transaction.

For these purposes there are two special numbers in the billing document header which can be passed on to the journal entry as follows:

  • The reference number in the journal entry header

  • The assignment number in the customer line item

The reference number can contain the number of the customer business transaction. This number can be used as search criteria for changing or displaying the document. You can print the reference number instead of the accounting document number in all business correspondence.

The assignment number provides additional information in the customer line item of the journal entry. The account line items are sorted and displayed according to the assignment number.

Any subsequent documents that relate to the invoice, such as a cancellation document, credit or debit memo, and so on, will have the same reference number, assignment number, or both. In this way the system can view these documents as belonging to a single business transaction.

In the app's configuration activities for billing document copying control (Define Copying Control for Sales Document to Billing Document, Define Copying Control for Billing Document to Billing Document, and Define Copying Control for Delivery Document to Billing Document), you can choose from the following sources to be used as the reference number and the assignment number in the billing document header:

  • A: Customer purchase order number

  • B: Sales order number

  • C: Delivery number

  • D: External delivery number

  • E: Current billing document number

  • F: External delivery number if available or, if not, the delivery number (used mainly in the component supply industry)

You can find the abovementioned configuration activities by using the search function in your configuration environment. For more information, see Configuration Environment of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

The reference number and the assignment number can be entered as follows:

  • Manually in the preceding reference document (for example, the sales order) by using the Change Sales Orders app:

    Choose Goto  Header   Accounting  <Reference or Assignment Field>.

  • Automatically in a billing document as follows:
    • Copied from the sales order

    • Automatically determined by the system

In the Display Billing Documents and Change Billing Documents apps, you can view the two numbers by choosing Goto  Header  Header Detail  <Reference or Assignment Field>

You can also view the reference number and assignment number in the header section of the Billing Document object page and the embedded object page within the Manage Billing Documents app.

See Also

Forwarding Billing Data to Financial Accounting

2977854 - Customer Reference not displayed in Billing Document (EBDR)

3257729 - No data in Customer Reference field in Manages Billing Documents app

Keywords

Reference,  Accounting, Journal Entry, Billing Document, Purchase Order, Sales Order, Billing Document , KBA , SD-BIL-2CL , Billing (Public Cloud) , How To

Product

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition all versions ; SAP S/4HANA Cloud all versions