Distribution
Applies to:
Credit Management in Sales and Distribution. For more information, visit the Enterprise Resource Planning
Homepage.
Summary
This document illustrates what is SAP SD credit management and how to configure it in a systematic
manner. It also explains how a new incoming sales order is checked against the customers credit limit. It
shows how credit management supports the information flow between different departments within a
company to make quick and efficient credit decisions.
Author Bio
Priyadharshini Shanmugasundaram is currently working as SAP Technical Consultant in Applexus
Technologies Pvt Ltd.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Table of Contents
Credit Management ............................................................................................................................................ 3
Purpose of Credit Management .......................................................................................................................... 3
Features .............................................................................................................................................................. 3
Types of Credit Management ............................................................................................................................. 4
Simple Credit Check: ...................................................................................................................................... 4
Automatic Credit Check: ................................................................................................................................. 4
Static Credit Limit Determination: ................................................................................................................... 4
Dynamic Credit Check Determination: ............................................................................................................ 5
Settings ............................................................................................................................................................... 5
Checks: ............................................................................................................................................................. 12
Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 16
Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 17
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Credit Management
Most enterprises extend credit to their customers. This literally means, selling their goods and collecting
money at a later point of time. The amount of credit extended is determined by the customer’s credit
worthiness (customer’s credit limit). The number of days for which credit is extended is based on the
payment terms associated with that transaction.
i.e.,If the customer’s credit limit is 20,000 and if he creates an order worth 16,000 with payment terms of Net
45 2% i.e., if money is paid within 45 days of purchase, the customer will get 2% discount),he needs to pay
(16,000 – 2% = 15600).
20,00-15,600= 4400
Features
Credit Management includes the following features:
Depending on your credit management needs, you can specify your own automatic credit checks
based on a variety of criteria. You can also specify at which critical points in the sales and
distribution cycle(for example : sales order entry, delivery, goods issue) the system carries out the
checks.
During order processing the credit representative automatically receives information about a
customer’s critical credit situation.
Critical credit situations can also be automatically communicated to credit management personnel
through internal electronic mail.
Your credit representatives are in a position to review the credit situation of a customer quickly and
accurately and, according to your credit policy, decide whether or not to extend credit.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Instead of just considering open items only, we need to consider open orders and open deliveries as well.
Also, for old and seasoned customers, even if the credit exposure exceeds the credit limit set for the
customer, the order can be still processed because of the good payment history with the company. This is
broadly classified into two:
Checking Groups:
Types of Checking Groups 01) Sales
02) Deliveries
03) Goods Issue
Risk Category: Based on the risk category the company decide how much credit has to give to the
Customer. High Risk (001): Low Credit
Low Risk (002): More Credit
Medium risk (003): Average Credit
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Dynamic credit check checks all these document value and check with the credit limit by considering the
horizon period.
1) Open Doc
2) Open Delivery
3) Open Billing
4) Open Items
5) Horizon Period
If the Horizon period is 4 months, the system will not consider the above 4 documents for 4 months.
That is if the delivery period is after 4 months, the system will not consider the document. The system
considers the document only if the delivery period of the open document is within 4 months.
Settings
Credit Control Area:
Credit management takes place in the credit control area. It is an Organizational unit that represents the area
where customer’s credit limit is specified and monitored.
A credit control area can include one or more company codes. It is not possible to divide a company code
into several credit control areas.
1. Assign Company Code to Credit Control Area.
Path: IMG -> Enterprise Structure -> Assignment -> Financial Accounting -> Assign Company Code
to Credit Control Area
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Path: IMG -> Financial Accounting -> Accounts receivable and accounts payable -> Credit
management -> define risk categories
In order to classify customers according to the risk they represent and to trigger the relevant checks,
you can assign a risk category to a customer. The risk category determines which checks the system
should carry out when processing orders in Sales and Distribution.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Here you can notice that the credit control area ‘INFC’ is assigned to the risk category ‘001-Low
Risk’.
Here we can specify for which sales document type or delivery document type the credit limit is to be
carried out and at what point of time the credit check has to take place whether order or delivery or
post goods issue.
If the credit check is set, the system will respond according to the following ways :
Warning message – The document can be saved.
Error message - The document cannot be saved
Setting a delivery block – The document can be saved but a delivery block will be set automatically.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
We can also specify for each item category whether credit check is to be carried out.
Path: IMG -> Sales and Distribution -> Basic functions -> Credit management/Risk Management ->
Credit management/Risk management settings ->Determine active receivables per item category.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Here you can check the credit active checkbox to activate the credit check for the corres[ponding
item category.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Here you can notice that the credit group 01 is assigned to the credit control area ‘INFC’.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Checks:
Static Credit Limit Check:
The customer’s credit exposure may not exceed the established credit limit.The credit exposure is the total
combined value of all the items:
Open Orders- The open order value is the value of the order items which have not yet been delivered.
Open Deliveries-The open delivery value is the value of the delivery items which have not yet been invoiced.
Open billing documents-The open invoice value is the value of the billing document items which have not yet
been forwarded to accounting.
Open Items(accounts receivable)-The open items represent documents that have been forwarded to
accounting but not yet settled by the customer
Critical Fields:
The credit check is triggered by changes made in the document to values in any of the credit-sensitive fields.
If a check in this field is carried out, the following fields are relevant :
Payment terms
Additional value days
Fixed value date
Next/Review date :
If you process a sales order after a customer's next review date has already gone by, the system
automatically carries out a credit check.
Open items :
Specifies whether the system carries out a credit check based on open items. This type of credit check works
in conjunction with two values that you specify in the adjacent fields :
Maximum percentage of overdue items in open items
Number of days which the open items are overdue
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
User-defined Checks :
If you want to carry out checks other than the standard checks, you can define your own checks in the
appropriate user exits.
For simple credit check, there is no need to assign the credit group to the document type. you can simply
assign where the check should happen while processing the order.
This means that, for the document type ‘XR’, the credit limit is checked at the time of delivery (B).
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Sales Order1:
Since the credit limit of the customer is 50,000, no credit check will happen.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Sales Order2:
Now total value of the open sales orders is 20,000 + 10,000 = 30,000.Now let us check whether the system
is giving warning message, if the sales order which we are going to create exceeds the credit limit of the
customer.
Sales Order3:
If the system gives a warning message the sales order will be saved. If it gives an error message, it will not
be saved. If you want an error message to be displayed, you can change the settings for credit management
as discussed in above steps.
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Credit Management in Sales and Distribution
Related Content
SAP Help Portal
SAP Documentation - Settings for Credit Management and Risk Management: Overview
For more information, visit the Enterprise Resource Planning Homepage.
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