Agency Business 

Use

You can use this component to process transactions between third parties (such as brokers and payment agencies). You can offer the parties involved advantages or services (such as del credere guaranties or simplified payment transactions), and perform settlement accounting for commissions in the system.

In pooled payment, the agency negotiates, for example, purchase price conditions and payment processing between the vendor and customer. The agency takes a commission from the customer and/or the vendor for services rendered. Transactions relating to the actual merchandise (for example, purchase orders and deliveries) can be carried out completely independently of the agency. For payment processing and calculating commission, the agency enters incoming invoices and remuneration settlements in agency documents.

Agency documents have the following common features:

·        There may be no reference in the system to previous transactions

·        Payments have to be settled on particular dates

·        There is direct contact between the customer and the vendor.

With the Agency Business component, you can enter documents without referring to previous transactions. This means that you can perform settlement accounting for payments and commission, even if the system does not contain any master data or movement data for the articles concerned.

·        Incoming Invoices

You can enter invoices from vendors and credit memos either as single settlement requests or in the form of a settlement request list.

·        Remuneration Settlement

You can enter all ad hoc remunerations or charges made to the vendor in the form of a vendor billing document.

You can also enter expenses for a customer in an expense settlement document, using the same method.

You can then create follow-on documents from these agency documents to perform settlement accounting for the invoices, credit memos, and commission.

Implementation Considerations

The Agency Business component is a part of the SAP System and can be used in all business transactions, irrespective of the actual industry sector involved.

Integration

The vendor and customer master and conditions must be in use if you want to use the Agency Business component.

The following relationships exist for components from the area of Retail:

Component	Function
Vendor master	Company-code-specific data, such as address, bank details, terms of payment and partner functions is defined for vendors (mandatory).
Customer master	Company-code-specific data, such as address, bank details, terms of payment and partner functions is defined for customers (mandatory).
Conditions	Condition records are defined, for example, discounts and charges.
Article master	Article-specific data is defined for vendor billing documents and expense settlement documents (mandatory). Article-specific data is defined for payment (optional).
Site master	Site-specific data is defined for payment and vendor billing documents (optional).

 

The following relationships exist for other SAP components:

Component	Function
Financial Accounting	General ledger, accounts payable and accounts receivable accounting for further processing of accounting documents using, for example, payment runs and open posting lists.
Logistics Information System	Standard analyses are carried out
SAP Business Information Warehouse	Update and analysis of statistical data from agency documents
Subsequent Settlement	Conditions are defined for subsequent settlement of conditions relating to the business partner Vendor billing document from the Subsequent Settlement document is used Sales updates from the customer settlement document Rebate settlement using the document Extended remuneration list
Archiving	Archiving of agency documents
Profitability Analysis (Controlling)	Incomes and rebates, for example, are transferred to the Profitability Analysis in the form of profitability analysis documents.
Actual Costing/Material Ledger (Controlling)
Profit Center Accounting (Enterprise Controlling)	Definition of an internal operating profit and additional controlling key figures for profit centers.
Cash Management (Treasury)	Documents that have not yet been forwarded to Accounting are transferred to Cash Management to ensure that funds are made available in time for payment of business partners.
Cash Budget Management (Treasury)	Control of payment flows with regard to liquidity
Credit/Risk Management (Financial Accounting)	Debit-side credit limit check for payment.

The section Functional Prerequisites for Agency Business describes the settings you need to make to process agency documents correctly.

Scope of Functions

·         Entry of incoming invoices without reference to preceding transactions, using the documents single settlement request and settlement request list/posting list or settlement request list/customer settlement documents.

For further information, see Single Settlement Requests, Settlement Request Lists, Posting Lists and Customer Settlement Documents

Entry of remuneration settlements without reference to preceding transactions using the vendor billing document andexpense settlement documents.

For further information, see Vendor Billing Documents or Expense Settlement Document.

·         Automatic determination of accounting-related data, such as terms of payment and cash discounts, when documents are entered.

·        Use of article-specific data.

·        Use of site-specific data.

·        Integrated calculation schema for determining prices and conditions.

·        Settlement of commission with business partners using the document Remuneration list or Extended remuneration list or settlement of rebates between vendor and customer, using the document Extended remuneration list.

For more information, see Remuneration List or Extended Remuneration List.

·        Creation of accounting documents that are forwarded to Financial Accounting.

·        Output of agency documents in the form of lists.

The lists are particularly useful when you are searching for documents, as you can go directly from the list to the document. For further information, see List Output for Agency Documents.

·        Option of going to Subsequent Settlement to define conditions that are to be settled retrospectively with business partners.

For further information, see: Subsequent Settlement.

• Complaints processing using agency documents or the agency business portal.

For further information see Entering Complaints Using an Agency Document and Entering Complaints Using an Agency Business Portal.