Agreement for Settlement Release 

Use

You use the agreement for settlement release in its personalized form as a basis for deciding whether remuneration is disbursed as actual commission. Settlement scheduling is required if remuneration is to be disbursed as actual commission. In this case, scheduling rules have to be determined in the commission contract.

When you save a commission contract for which actual commission is specified, the system checks whether scheduling rules have been defined. If no rules are defined, you receive an error message. The contract cannot be saved actively and is set to pending.

The actual commission function lets you specify particular events that have to be met before the settlement schedule items are released and subsequently passed on to the disbursement system (such as a payment notification for a particular business transaction). For each settlement schedule item you can define a separate release rule that determines the fulfillment level required for the release of each settlement schedule item. When this level is reached, the system receives a signal that the corresponding settlement schedule item can be passed on for disbursement.

A settlement schedule item can be released for disbursement before the fulfillment level of 100% is reached provided that a release rule to this effect has been defined (such as Release at 90%).

 

Prerequisites

You have defined scheduling rules in the commission contract.

You must also have activated the object data update function in the Implementation Guide (IMG):

Incentive and Commission Management ® Basic Function ® Preparation of Posting Processing and Parallel Processing  ® Settings for Document Posting:
Under Settings for Document Posting (Active Versions) the indicator in the Comp.Obj. is not set.

Effects on Customizing

You have made the following settings in the Implementation Guide (IMG):

●     Actual Commission
Incentive and Commission Management -> Basic and Master Data  -> Standard Commission Contract  -> Payment Release Agreement

●     Remuneration Scheduling
Incentive and Commission Management  -> Basic and Master Data  -> Standard Commission Contract  -> Agreement for Remuneration Scheduling

●     Logical Services of OTC 27
Incentive and Commission Management -> Tools ->Logical Service: Edit Tools

●     Determination (Authorization Object 27)

Features

The determination of actual commission and corresponding release rules and fulfillment levels is based on the interaction between the commission system SAP ICM, the operational system that delivers the data (such as SAP FS-CD) and the fulfillment level tool linking both of them.

●     In the commission case process, the commission system checks whether a payment agreement exists in the contract, and if so which type of agreement each time a new remuneration line is created.  If the payment type is determined as target commission, the process continues in the normal way without settlement scheduling.

●     However, if a remuneration entitlement is identified as being actual commission, the system calls up settlement scheduling and creates the settlement schedule items including the period-based fulfillment levels according to the defined scheduling rules.
The operational system (such as SAP FS-CD) supplies the information to the fulfillment level tool that a payment has been received. This message is passed on by the inbound interface method to the fulfillment level tool.
To determine which period-based clearing or payment notifications have an effect on which settlement schedule items and their fulfillment levels, the incoming payment notifications in the fulfillment level tool are assigned uniquely to the fulfillment levels with an inbound type (IB_TYP_ID) in a routing table.

●     The fulfillment level tool creates fulfillment levels using the following six methods and monitors the status of each settlement schedule item. It always updates the status when a new payment notification arrives:

○     Method 01: Determine intervals
Calculates time intervals for fulfillment levels.

○     Method 02: Create fulfillment levels
Creates an entry in the fulfillment level header table and a referencing entry in the fulfillment level item table with the sequence ID 1.

○     Method 03: Read fulfillment level and update settlement schedule item
Reads a fulfillment level and determines whether the fulfillment level is sufficient to release a settlement schedule item. After release, the settlement schedule item receives the value 0 (= released) in the FFLSTATUS field.
Before release, settlement schedule items can have the following statuses:
1 = locked – Waiting for fulfillment notification
2 = locked – Fulfillment level not yet determined

○     Method 04: Start fulfillment level determination
Calculates the fulfillment level of a fulfillment level header by searching for (new) fulfillment level items and recalculating the fulfillment level based on the new and already assigned items.

○     Method 05: Delete fulfillment level
Deletes a fulfillment level header (entry in Fulfillment Level Headers table) and all the fulfillment level items referencing it. This only happens when the corresponding settlement schedule items are deleted.

A fulfillment level item with sequence ID 0 (zero) is never deleted since it may be used as the source document for other settlement schedule items in the future.

○     Method 06: Post Fulfillment Levels
The posting data collected is written to the database.
As soon as the fulfillment level specified in the release rule is reached (such as Release at 90%), the settlement schedule item receives status 0 = Released. The item can now be converted into a settlement item in the settlement schedule run.

Activities

Processing Agreements for Settlement Scheduling

Selecting Release Rules for Actual Commission