Funds Integration

Funds integration enhances the functionality of the trade promotion management (TPM) solution by incorporating claims and funds management functions. You can use the funds management functions to determine which funds are used for your trade promotion activities. For planning purposes, you can associate a funds plan to the trade promotion, and associate particular funds to the trade promotion at various levels. In so doing, you can determine the expenses expected for the trade promotion and reserve budget accordingly.

Prerequisites

You have made settings for funds integration in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Trade Promotion Management Trade Promotions Funds Integration Define Settings for Funds Integration .
If you want to change the standard delivery Customizing for automated funds association or automated budget reservation, you have made the appropriate settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Trade Promotion Management Basic Data Define Status-Driven Events .
You have made settings for availability control in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Funds Management Availability Control (AVC) .

Features

Funds plan association
To use funds with your trade promotion, you must first associate a funds plan with your trade promotion.

The administrator who manages budgets for trade promotions creates a funds plan that groups various funds. Each funds plan has a planning period, currency, organizational data, and various attributes assigned to it.

The key account manager (KAM) plans a trade promotion for a specific period of time. The system ensures that the currencies of the trade promotion and the funds plan match, and that the date range for the trade promotion falls within the planning period of the funds plan.
Funds association
A funds plan contains a set of funds. Once a funds plan has been associated with your trade promotion, you must determine which funds from the funds plan to use for your trade promotion.

You can set up funds for any of the key attributes, such as product, account, or trade spends. The KAM is given access to a specific set of funds, depending on which accounts and brands they manage. When planning a specific trade promotion, the KAM uses the funds to budget for the planning expenses.

The ways to associate funds to trade promotions are as follows:
- Automated association
  The system uses rules set up in the fund determination and availability check profiles to pick the relevant funds for the trade promotion. Automated fund association is triggered during the status transition of the trade promotion. You can set this up in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Trade Promotion Management Basic Data Define Status-Driven Events .
- Manual association
  If you are familiar with how the funds are set up in the system, you can manually assign funds to a trade promotion. The system uses the same rules as for automated association to restrict the set of funds that can be associated to the trade promotion.
  
  Note
  If you manually assign funds to the trade promotion and then later trigger automated fund association (with a change in the trade promotion status), the system does not overwrite previous funds that were assigned manually. Instead, automated fund association only adds any relevant funds that were not added during manual fund association.
  
  End of the note.
With both automated and manual association, funds can be associated at the following levels:
- Root
  If you associate the fund at the root level, the system uses only the data in the trade promotion header to determine the relevant funds for the trade promotion. You should only use this option if the funds in your system do not have product attributes defined. You can also use this option for general purpose funds that are not for specific trade expenses.
- Product
  You can associate a suitable fund for each product included in the trade promotion. The system retrieves the funds applicable to the product (also including product category, product group and product segment) based on the fund determination rules. However, this assumes that the fund you choose at the product level is applicable for all the trade spends you set up for the trade promotion.
- Trade spend
  The trade spend captures how you promote a product in your trade promotion. You can search for a suitable fund for each trade spend used in your trade promotion. The system uses the expense type that is mapped to your trade spend and the fund determination rules to determine a suitable fund from the funds plan. This option should only be used if the funds in your system do not have product attributes defined.
- Trade spend/product
  You can also search for a suitable fund for each combination of product and trade spend. This is the most precise way to associate a fund to your trade promotion if the funds in your system have both product and account attributes defined. The fund details assignment block is used to associate the funds at this level.
- Target group
  You can associate funds to a target group by assigning a target group owner. This allows you to determine the combination of funds that can be used for a trade promotion based on the target group owner. The target group owner is a node within the account hierarchy. To create a new target group with an owner, you must use the Service Parts Management (SPL) business role. When creating the segment, you must specify business partner for the segment object, and conditions for the usage. For the target group properties you must specify the employee responsible, territory, and owner hierarchy node.
Availability control
You can manually check the availability of the associated fund(s) on the trade promotion detail page by choosing More Check Availability .
Fund budget reservation
When the trade promotion reaches a certain predefined status, the system begins to reserve budget for the promotion from the funds. The system uses the trade promotion planning information to determine marketing expenses. Then, based on the fund association, it determines which fund to use for these expenses and reserves budget by creating a fund usage. For each trade spend, the system creates a fund usage that is displayed in the fund usages assignment block.

There are two types of reservation: reserved and pre-reserved. The type of reservation depends on certain statuses that can be maintained in Customizing.

More Information

Funds Management

Trade Spends and Dates

Availability Control in Claims and Funds