Payment Medium Format 

Definition

The payment medium format controls how payment orders and debit memo orders to the bank are created. The specifications (published by the banks or the central banking committees) of the formats serve as the basis for definition of payment medium formats.

Example

The Payment Medium Workbench contains a range of predefined formats, like the DTAUS0 format for domestic payment transactions in Germany, ACH for domestic payment transactions in USA, and OFX for Internet payments via OFX.

To create a format, in Customizing for Financial Accounting, choose Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable ® Business Transactions ® Outgoing Payments ® Automatic Outgoing Payments ® Payment Media ® Make Settings for Payment Medium Formats from Payment Medium Workbench ® Create Payment Medium Formats.

To change a format, in Customizing for Financial Accounting, choose Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable ® Business Transactions ® Outgoing Payments ® Automatic Outgoing Payments ® Payment Media ® Make Settings for Payment Medium Formats from Payment Medium Workbench ® Adjust Payment Medium Format.

Formats contain various fields that are filled with field contents from your SAP system. This transaction is called mapping. There are two ways in which mapping can occur.

Use

The payment medium format can be country-dependent or country-independent and is assigned to one or more payment methods.

Structure

The following settings are made during definition of a format:

  1. Payment medium type (DME, for example)
  2. Level of detail of the payment medium

    3. This is the level at which payment orders should be grouped in a file (for example creation of a file per combination of house bank and paying company code).

  3. Format-specific parameters
  4. Payment Medium Format Supplements (for example format-specific description for bank transfer and debit memo)
  5. Events that call function modules, connection to DME Engine
  6. Size of text fields for the Note to Payee

Example

The note to payee for the German format DTAUS0 is described as follows:

 With the previous classic method for creation of payment media, the format is implemented as a program whilst the structure of the note to payee is predefined.