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Author's profile photo Angelika Huber
Angelika Huber
January 30, 2023 1 minute read

Payment Differences and How to Deal with them in SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Sometimes customers pay less than what they owe you. Does this sound familiar?
I bet it does, and you probably ask yourself how to deal with these payment differences. You‘ve heard all the buzz words – like tolerance limits, partial payments, residual items, reason codes – and your head is spinning. So, let’s take a closer look at how these features relate to each other.

Tolerance Limits for Automatic Clearing

Tolerance limits define how big the difference between what you invoiced and what your customer actually pays is allowed to be. This means that if the payment difference is within the tolerance limit, it can still be posted and cleared automatically.
To learn more about tolerance limits, go to our Product Assistance for Tolerance Limits.

Partial Payments vs Residual Items

If the payment difference is outside the tolerance limits, you must post and clear the payment difference manually.

You can post partial payments and residual items in the Clear Incoming Payments app, the Post Incoming Payments app, and the Reprocess Bank Statement Items app.

  • If you post a partial payment, both the invoice and the payment remain as open items until the outstanding payment is made.
  • If you post a residual item, on the other hand, the invoice and the payment are cleared, and the system creates a new open item for the outstanding payment.

To learn more about partial payments and residual items, go to our Product Assistance for Partial Payments versus Residual Items.

To learn more about the other options for manual clearing, go to our Product Assistance for Payment Differences.

Reason Codes

You can use reason codes to document why you posted a payment difference. Reason codes can be used both for partial payments and residual items. You can also use them to write off payment differences via a separate G/L account.

To learn more about reason codes, go to our Product Assistance for Reason Codes.

The following graphic sums up what you need to know about payment differences:

If the payment difference is within tolerance limits, the payment is posted and cleared automatically. If the payment difference is not within tolerance limits, you have several options to post and clear the payment manually. You can a) adjust the cash discount manually, b) post a partial payment (by using a reason code without the Charge Off indicator), c) post a residual item (by using a reason code without the Charge Off indicator), d) write off the payment difference with a reason code with the Charge Off indicator, e) post the payment on the customer account, and f) post the payment or the payment difference to a G/L account that you select manually.

Overview of how to deal with payment differences

Thanks for reading this blog post. I hope it’s given you an insight into payment differences and how you can deal with them.

Feel free to leave any comments you may have below.

See also:

Partial and Residual Payments in S/4HANA Cloud

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      2 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Santosh Jha
      Santosh Jha

      Is there a way to make partial vendor payment against an invoice in S/4HC, and it should also generate payment file? Create SIngle Payment doesn't have a way to capture invoice and Post outgoing payment doesn't generate payment medium file.

      Author's profile photo Angelika Huber
      Angelika Huber
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Santosh,

      Sorry for the late reply.
      Unfortunately, there is no standard solution for S/4HANA Public Cloud (in OP transaction F-59 can be used).
      To find out how many Cloud customers would actually expect such a feature and to be able to rank it accordingly, we would appreciate it if your customer created a feature request in CIP and other customers could vote on this.

      Thanks and best regards,
      Angelika