Monitoring High Value Credit Memos to Customers
Credit memos in the SD module reduce amounts receivable from customers. The risk is, of course, that a credit memo is bogus (unwarranted, too high), leading to an immediate financial loss.
There are also credit memos in SAP FI, but we will focus on the SD module only in this example.
SD credit memos that exceed a certain amount should be monitored, and here we show how to set up such a control and automate it so that you receive alerts in remQ. The setup does not require coding.
The tables in SAP ERP or S/4HANA where invoicing documents are stored are VBRK (header), and VBRP (line items). Here we only use data from table VBRK.
We use SAP’s Query Viewer, so start transaction SQVI and create a new query. In order to use it in remQ later, the query name must start with the prefix REM_.
Select Table as data source and enter the table name VBRP along with some title, which will be part of the check ID in remQ later.
On the next screen you can select which fields from the table you want to use: select fields like Billing Document Number (field VBELN), Billing Type (FKART), Amount and Currency (NETWR and WAERK), Name of Peron who Created the Object/Document and the Date (ERNAM and ERDAT), the customer or Sold-to party (KUNAG), and other information you might find useful.
3 fields are particular for the analysis here:
1. You want to check only billing documents that are credit memos (in table VBRK are many types of billing documents). Make sure you know which documents type in your organization, in our standard system we will use RE and B1. You will need to select only those types in the next step, and therefore this field FKART is a “Selection Field” in SQVI. (List Fields are displayed and for information only but cannot be used for analyzing data.)
2. The date when the document was entered: this can be used to restrict the time horizon for which documents are checked, so this field ERDAT also is a Selection Field.
3. Net Value in Document Currency: if you want to set a threshold and only see credit memos above a certain limit, then add this field as a selection field. NOTE: there is a restriction here though, as this is a value in the document currency and the currencies for different documents can be different. So setting up a single threshold here for all documents means that the number for the threshold will be applied to amounts in different currencies. If you only have documents in 1 currency, e.g. because you also restrict data to 1 company code only, then this works. It also is working ok if the x-rates between (major) currencies is reasonably close to 1 (like for EUR and USD), because then then threshold is not precisely the same in different currencies, but approximately. It fails if you have currencies with x-rates that are >>1, e.g. for Yen. In those cased, consider setting up SQVIs for different company codes/currencies.
Click on execute, and on the next screen, field out details to create a variant:
Save the variant and add a variant name.
You can now execute the variant and get results in SQVI, those results can be used in remQ to create alerts in continuous monitoring, and we look at how that works:
Go to the QuickView2Check transaction (/n/REM/QV2CHECK, or through the link in the admin transaction), and select the query/variant just created:
You can change the REM_AREA and REM_ID and then add more fields to the alert layout, click on the selection fields to get a list of available fields:
Check Document Number and Fiscal Year as key fields to make sure you receive alerts for a certain document only once even when you run the check multiple times. Then save, and you can include this check in your monitoring by activating it: check the Active CM box.
Results will look like in this screenshot below. Note that for such checks created without coding using the SQVI, you can define exceptions and auto-reaction methods (e.g. block a document detected) exactly like for all other remQ checks.
