Bank Chains (Multi-Stage Payment Methods) 

Use

Bank chains are used to make payment via more than one bank, for example via the correspondence banks of the house bank, the recipient bank, or the intermediary banks. You can define up to three banks.

Before the advent of this function, when making a payment to a business partner abroad, you had to specify your house bank and the business partner’s bank when processing payments. These two banks represented the start and end of the payment cycle and it was down to the house bank to determine via which banks the payment should be made. Using the bank chain function, you can now specify this bank chain yourself, leading to faster payment transaction processing and considerable cost savings through reduced bank charges.

Integration

To use the bank chain function, you must also implement the function Automatic Payments in either the Financial Accounting (FI) or the Treasury (TR) application component.

For more information on automatic payments in Financial Accounting, see Payments For more information on automatic payments in Treasury, see Payment Program for Payment Requests

Features

For each payment, the payment program can determine a combination of intermediary banks that you previously defined. The order of the banks in the bank chain can depend on the following factors:

These factors are represented in the R/3 System by means of scenarios for bank chain determination that you define in Customizing for Bank Accounting, as described under Activities below.

If you carry out a payment run (whether for open items or for payment requests from Treasury or Cash Management) the system determines the bank chain according to your Customizing settings and those you made in the master data. If, during payment proposal editing, you have changed an entry (house bank or partner bank for example) that is relevant to bank chain determination, the system re-determines the bank chain, which is then displayed on screen.

The system is only able to determine the bank chain if a payment method is used for which a bank chain is needed (no bank chain is determined for payments by check for example.)

When processing payments, you can use program RFZALI20 to create a payment list and an exception list. The payment list contains a summary of all payments and line items. The exceptions list contains blocked line items and open items that the payment program did not propose for payment. In the standard system, the bank chain in not included on either list. If you want to have the bank chain output on the payment or exception list, see Including Bank Chains on Payment Lists

Bank chains are transferred each time a payment medium is created. The following formats are supported in this process:

Activities

  1. Copy one of the scenarios that are delivered in the standard system or define a new scenario.

    2. To do so, in Customizing for Bank Accounting choose Bank Chains ® Define Scenario

  2. Activate the scenario.

    3. To do so, in Customizing for Bank Accounting choose Bank Chains ® Activate Bank Chain

  3. If you want payments to be made via a bank chain and independently of a business partner’s bank details, define a general bank chain.

To do so, in Customizing for Bank Accounting choose Bank Chains ® Create General Bank Chain

If you want payments to be made via a bank chain and dependent on a business partner’s bank details, define a partner-specific bank chain.

To do so, on the SAP R/3 screen, choose Accounting ® Financial accounting ® Banking

® Master data ® Bank chain ® House banks ® Edit. Defining Bank Chains for House Banks.

® Master data ® Bank chain ® Bank account carry over. Defining Bank Chains for Cash Management.

® Master data ® Bank chain ® Business partners ® Edit. Defining Bank Chains for Customers and Vendors.