Optimizing Bank Selection 

Use

For every payment method you can specify for each company code whether the program should select the optimal bank for payment. Optimization can be by bank group or by postal code. See Company Code-Specific Definitions for the Payment Method: Graphic

Optimization by bank group helps ensure that money is transferred from your house bank to your customer/vendor’s bank as fast as possible. In order to do this, assign a bank group (that is freely definable) to all banks in your master records.

Optimization by postal code ensures the house bank is selected according to the customer/vendor’s location.

Optimization by Bank Group

If you specify optimization according to bank groups for a payment method, the payment program selects two banks that belong to the same bank group. If several house banks come into consideration, the bank with the highest priority (ranking order) is selected. If an optimization is not possible, the optimization function does not apply.

In the first part of the figure below, two banks belong to the same bank group: The Bank of America belongs to the bank group BA as a house bank and also as the bank of the customer/vendor. The Bank of Chicago belongs to the bank group BC. In this case, the payment program selects the Bank of America, i.e. the bank with the higher priority. The second part of the figure shows a combination for which optimization is not possible. The payment program selects the house bank with the highest priority without taking optimization into account.

You determine which bank group a bank belongs to in the master data of the bank. You should set up the groups in such a way that the financial transactions can be processed between the banks of the same group rapidly. In Germany, for example, the banks that belong to the same giro network are assigned to the same bank group.

Optimization by Postal Code

If a certain payment method specifies optimization by postal code, the payment program selects a house bank based on the postal code area of the customer/vendor. If no house bank is defined for the postal code area of the customer/vendor, or if the selected house bank cannot be used, the payment program selects the house bank with the highest priority from the priority list. In this case, optimization does not take place.

For this type of optimization, you must assign your house banks to a range of postal codes (see the figure below).