The secrets of interim settlement in the rebate agreements

[former_member193326]

I find many times difficult to design the settlement process for rebate agreements, specially regarding the settlement time. Some people would like to do it daily, which is not recommended due to performance issues, some would like to do it monthly and some would like to do it, at different time spots, depending on the business volume or the business solvency situation. 

Are you planning to use interim settlement as a normal process in your business?.  I can show you why it is advisable to use the end period settlement instead of the interim. As the following problems occur:

A large number of  settlement documents might result for each condition record, in particular for cross-company settlement.  Interim settlements do not represent a data retention level. This causes problems with regard to traceability as it is difficult to
trace which business volumes (document items) have been settled in which settlement. Business volume data changes directly after an interim settlement due to additional business volume updates.

Considerable problems can occur during a required recompilation, if, for example, settlement documents or business volume generating documents have already been archived. All the documents depend on and are based on one another!

On the other hand, the condition record is blocked for partial settlements. Business volume data is frozen with the status of  the settlement. The condition record can no longer be changed.

SAP thus strongly recommend that agreements not be repeatedly settled on an interim basis! If any problems occur, it is easy to get into the situation that the cause of the error can not be traced or reproduced. Analysis and elimination of the error may therefore be impossible. Then the only option is to restore the
business volume data and/or income data and to correct the
settlement data.

An interim settlement should always be an exception (for example, insolvency of the vendor is threatening) and should not at all occur regularly (let alone daily).

I hope this tips can help you decide better how to design your subsequent settlement process!.