Use this process to make supplier payments using a file to various financial institutions, or payment institutes. To begin the process, you create a payment proposal based on information such as payment date interval, currency, suppliers to be covered, and payment method. You can specify specific invoices, include credit invoices, and use a cash discount. You can generate an empty proposal and enter the invoices manually. Only authorized invoices can be selected. The payment proposal must be acknowledged and a payment order created with output data on file or other media, depending on the payment format. If necessary, you can delete the payment order. Payments are created in the system when the payments have been carried out and acknowledged in the system, according to documentation from the payment institutes. When the payment is matched, the matched invoices and the payment will be assigned with a unique ID and a matching date.
There is a function for undoing an entire payment or part of one. Undoing a payment means that you reverse the payment and post invoices and prepayments as unpaid. You can either post the entire payment as unpaid at once, or post only certain invoices or prepayments.
There are also functions within the process for handling supplier offsets between debit and credit invoices, between payments on account and invoices, between payments in advance and invoices, and against parked payments. The offset process does not cause any cash flow in the cash accounts, and the total amount must always be zero.
Although each payment is always made by a single company, a payment proposal, payment order, file, document output, or acknowledgement for that company can include invoices and payments on account from other companies. Companies included in the payment must support payment methods used by the paying company. If specific payment instructions exist on an invoice, these are always used, no matter which values were set up as the defaults for the supplier for the company making the payment. Inter-company claims and debts are automatically created to cover the relation between the involved companies.
Note: Before you start entering information, make sure that the required basic data has been entered according to the instructions in the Define Financials Basics/Set up Basic Data Accounts Payable process.