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AngelikaHuber
Advisor
Advisor
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:


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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