Clear Customers in SAP

“Can BEST help us clear customers in SAP?”

When discussing the clearing of open items in SAP with clients, this question frequently arises because of several common challenges faced by businesses managing customer accounts:

• A single lump-sum payment is received in the bank account.
• The payment may cover multiple customer accounts.
• A detailed remittance is provided for the payment, covering numerous invoices, credit notes, discounts and other items.
• A member of the finance team must spend hours, or sometimes an entire day, allocating the payment to individual customer line items and reconciling the payment, remittance and customer accounts.

If these challenges sound familiar, BEST Customer Clearing can significantly reduce the time required to allocate payments and clear customer accounts in SAP.

How Does BEST Help Clear Customers in SAP?

Using the advanced matching and clearing functionality provided by BEST, customer remittances can be uploaded directly into SAP.

The lump-sum payment is replaced by detailed remittance line items posted to the relevant SAP customer accounts. Once the payment has been represented at line-item level, with the associated reference information, BEST can automatically match and clear the customer account items against the corresponding remittance lines.

To save additional time, BEST can determine which customer account each remittance line should be posted to by using information such as the billing document or delivery note number provided on the remittance.

This is particularly useful when a single payment covers multiple SAP customer accounts. It removes the need to split the payment and remittance lines between those accounts manually. The user can load one file, validate it against the relevant master data and allow the remittance lines to be posted to the appropriate customer accounts.

Benefits of Automated Customer Clearing in SAP

BEST Customer Clearing provides the following benefits:

• Posts detailed remittance lines to support accurate and automated matching against customer line items.
• Determines the appropriate customer account for each remittance line automatically using billing document and delivery note references.
• Displays uncleared remittance lines on the customer statement so that they can be reviewed and resolved.
• Allows short payments to remain on the account for follow-up or to be cleared using residual-item functionality.
• Reduces manual processing time through automated remittance posting, matching and clearing.
• Supports payments covering multiple customer accounts without requiring the finance team to split the payment manually.
• Provides clearer account information to support query resolution and customer communication.

Through programmatic lookups, matching rules and automated processing, BEST Customer Clearing reduces the time required to clear customer accounts in SAP. It also helps finance teams maintain more accurate customer account balances with fewer manual errors and unresolved queries.

Contact the BEST team to arrange a demonstration of BEST Customer Clearing.