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Receivables Management
Receivables Management in line with its title is self explanatory. In SAP S/4 HANA enterprise
management it enhances management of Accounts Receivables. Incoming cash flow from sales is the
heartbeat of every organization. Managing this sales cash flow is effort an intensive process and
often complex.
Receivables Management (RM) has excellent system functions to evaluate a Business Partner’s credit
situation before a sale is initiated. It also allows proactively managing delayed payments. It
streamlines management of disputes in the Business Partner’s sales invoices. It ultimately reduces
Days sales outstanding (DSO), improves the working capital. Assists in lowering operating costs and
minimize bad debt and write-offs. In the earlier SAP ECC 6.0, RM was referred to as Financial Supply
Chain Management (FSCM).
It facilitates effective management of collections and better service to Business partners (BP)
It allows the collection team agent to proactively evaluate, identify, and prioritize the BP
accounts that have Sales Invoices past their due dates but haven’t been paid.\
It allows prioritization of collections calls, document BP contact, set call-back reminders and
record invoice disputes.
It facilitates electronically sending copies of Invoices and statements during BP contact.
For collections Managers there are reports to analyze agent performance to better distribute
workload.
In aging reports the Collection data can be combined with receivables information.
This helps to reduce DSO, improve collections rates, and enhance sales related Business
Partner relationships.
2.1 Keys items in Collections Management
Collections Management has the following 2 key items
Collection Specialist
Collection Manager
System (i.e. Automated steps)
2.2.1 Collection Specialist
A collection specialist is a team member who contacts the Business Partners (BP) from the Sales
business.
The Collection specialist accesses the worklist, prepares for contacting the BP, contacts the BP and
documents the details involved in this contact.
Once the collection specialist has logged in the S/4 HANA systems, all the APPS what are applicable
to the user are displayed.
The APP for accessing the collection worklist has been shown above in a red box. The APP displays
on the tile the number of worklist items that are assigned to the specialist. These Items denote
number of Business partners.
Once the worklist APP is accessed the list of Business partners appears in the order of priority i.e.
the scoring pattern. Here the user can check the different amounts like outstanding, Disputed etc.
Missed payments and call back reminders.
Inside the worklist APP, if the user clicks on the priority column it takes the user through the
strategy rules applied on the Business Partner (BP) and details how the total score was arrived. The
worklist also provides an overview of the different BP accounts. If credit management is applicable
the credit limit and usage can also be seen. Incase Dunning is applicable the level can be seen.
Within each Business partner item the specialist can drill one level below. This lists the details of the
BP i.e. Invoices and Payments, Disputes, missed payments and callback reminders.
An overview of the details allows the specialist to prepare for contacting the BP. The list of notes
shown on the right hand side bottom is a massive improvement over the earlier ECC 6.0 based
Collections Management.
The notes are now shown at a BP level. In S/4 HANA every action performed on the worklist is
logged within the respective BP as notes. The due date based graph for BP receivables in respective
buckets is another new addition in S/4 HANA that pictorially helps the specialist during the BP
contact
When the BP agrees to pay at on a particular date the same is noted. The date can be renewed. If
payments are not received on the set date, the system marks it as broken promise to pay.
When a promise to pay is recorded, the system doesn’t consider the respective item in the worklist
until the promise to pay is broken
2. Withdraw promises to pay
BP can changes their mind based on the confirmation and the broken promise to pay it can be
withdrawn
3. Create Disputes
When the BP disputes an Invoice, the same can be recorded from the worklist in S/4 HANA Dispute
Management.
4. Create Resubmission
The BP cannot be reached sometimes or is reached but requests to call at a different time. In such
scenarios an resubmission record is submitted
5. Complete Resubmission
6. Create Correspondence
When BP is contacted and request Invoice copies or periodic account statements, the same can be
immediately sent across via the BP correspondence.
7. Mark Customer Contact Result
When BP is contacted the result is set to remove that item from the worklist and move to the
subsequent item.
The same with checking equal distribution of worklist items. This can be done from the worklist by
navigating to different specialist in the list.
The key advantage of S/4 HANA is the analytical apps are also within one FIORI UX portal unlike ECC
6 where the manager had to access the BI portal. The APPS are configured to highlight key indicators
on top.
This periodic step includes daily creation of worklist with the updated accounts receivable data.
3. Conclusion
Collections Management in S/4 HANA is definitely a very intuitive solution. The user experience with
the UX FIORI apps are impeccable, same is the experience with real-time time analytics in the same
system.
The Collections manager related apps are not in place yet. Hence there is a dependency on personas
and backend ECC screens, leaves a lot more to be desired. This is definitely an area of improvement.