Assumption: Reader has basic knowledge on Accounts payables and is aware of FBZP set up in the system. 

Overview:

BCM stands for Bank Communication Management, which is a component under FSCM (Financial Supply Chain Management). BCM is responsible for communication with a bank in terms of payments sent, acknowledgments received and approval workflows before payments are sent to the bank. Having said that BCM does not send payment files to banks. It’s a middleware that picks up the file, encrypts it, and sends it to the bank. BCM is responsible for the grouping of payments, merging of batches, approvals for batches, and generating the payment batch. These batches get updated in the bank monitor. Upon receiving responses/acknowledgments from the bank, the bank monitor gets updated with appropriate status. In short, bank monitor is your single source of truth for payment batches.

Configuration Pre-requisites:

To be performed by basis team:

• BCM module is activated in the system.
• WF-Batch user id is created. The user id has the “SAP All” role assigned.
• Package is created for workflows to enable rules to be transported to other systems.
• Workflows are activated (This is a basis task and not a functional task). You may check if all the related standard workflows are activated using tcode SWU3

To be performed by functional consultant:

• Make sure the workflow templates and tasks are assigned as general task. To do so call transaction PFTC. Update task type and task. Click on edit to update this task as general task. If this is not maintained as general task, you will not be able to see your batch in bank monitor(BNK_MONI/BNK_MONIP). Below is the list of task type which needs to be updated/ checked:

50100075, 50100025,50100066,50100024,50100021.

Click on additional data tab>>Agent assignment>>Maintain.

Click on attributes after selecting the task

Change it to general task .

Warning: Please do not change the classification in any case. This will cause errors and workflows will not work.

• Update all relevant workflow objects and/tasks to “general tasks”. Without doing this you will not be able to use bank monitor. This activity will enable the batch updates in bank monitor.

BCM Configuration:

This blog will cover only basic business scenario where we will have approvals in place and relevant rules, roles and responsibilities created.

As stated, above BCM is a part pf FSCM module in SAP. Below is the node for BCM.

Basic settings:

Path:

IMG>>SPRO>>FSCM>BCM>>Basic settings>>Basic settings for approval

Below are standard basic settings for a payment batch. Select signature required only if signatories are maintained in BAM (Bank account management)

Payment grouping:

Path: IMG>>SPRO>>FSCM>>BCM>>Payment grouping>>Rule maintenance

Here you will have to create the rule which will be used in the workflows in next step. These rules are created based on business requirements.

These rules are applied to responsibilities created based on priority assigned.

Save rule and select the row to maintain the rules

Update rule criteria based on your requirement for the rule:

Release strategy:

Path:

IMG>>SPRO>>FSCM>>BCM>>Release strategy>>Change and release>>Assign role to release steps

• Click on the new entries above and add “BNK_INI” as a release object. This release WF task is activated by basis and is a standard workflow that is delivered with the SAP BCM module.
• Select “01” from the drop-down for required release. This is your first-level approval of the dual approval workflow.
• Select “1” from the drop-down for the WF release step. As mentioned above this is your first step approval.
• Hit enter and save to generate rule number. This rule number is auto-generated in the system. Do not enter rule number manually.

Save and select the rule to create responsibility:

create responsibility based on rules created for payment grouping above

Select the responsibility and click on create

Once it’s saved, the status of responsibility turns from red to green. Select the responsibility and click on insert agent assignment to add the users responsible for the first level of release of the payment batch

Select user and update the sap user id of the approver

Additional release steps:

Path:

IMG>>SPRO>>FSCM>>BCM>>Additional release steps>>Assign roles to release steps:

This is the config for 2^nd level of approver

Follow the same procedure as it was done for the first-level approver. This time only workflow task changes to “BNK_COM”

Create rule

Insert agents for 2^nd level approvers as done for first level approvers above

Define release procedure:

Select conditional and click on create to trigger 2^nd level approval workflow using the rule id created earlier.

Click on create new icon:

Click on the drop-down to expand the folder and select the release procedure. Usually, we select rule id here. However, you may select any other option as well based on business requirements.

Choose your options as shown on the screen below. You can always use drop-down:

Click on save and add it in a customizing transport:

Assign workflow template to release procedure:

Assign the workflow template being used to release procedure.

Mark rules for automatic approvals:

Here you specify if you want to have auto approval of payment batches or yu want the approver to drill down the batch before approving it.

Select appropriate option as per the business requirement

This covers basic configuration for BCM. BCM offers flexibility to choose how you may want to do batch grouping. This can be done by using additional criteria for payment grouping as below:

Select group fields from drop down and assign priority as per the requirements.

Check out my next blog on payment status management and bank statement monitor.

Note: I have covered only BCM basic configuration. Payment status management and bank statement monitor will be covered in next blog.

Feel free to comment if you have any questions or clarifications.

Happy SAPing !!