Differential Invoice in Commodity Management
The differential invoice is part of a multi-step invoicing process for purchase order items for which invoice verification can initially only determine a provisional price. Up until the final invoice, you can use the differential invoice to reflect price differences of a material that arise, for example, following price development during a specified calculation period, or based on the results of quality assays
The invoice document contains both the current quantity (invoice item) and the previous quantity (credit memo item), and displays the difference between the amounts. In the accounting document, the system posts the amounts for the invoice items in a differential invoice as an invoice amount or a credit memo amount. The sum of all amounts of the invoice items and credit memo items determines the type of difference posting of the overall difference amount.
The differential invoice therefore offers you a way of reacting to price fluctuation in the purchasing process for commodities.
Example
Enterprises that trade in commodities often purchase partially processed materials, for example metal ores. The price in the purchase orders is typically determined based on rules, rather than on agreed fixed prices. The price depends on the quality delivered and on the market price of the material delivered, although the market price can result, for example, from a contractually specified period of the exchange price.
Since these parameters are often still open when the invoice is created, it is usual in these sectors to start by creating a provisional invoice. This can be based, for example, on particular quality parameters at the time of loading (for example at the goods receipt of a batch), or on the price of a provisional exchange rate period. Until the final quality parameters have been determined (for example through assays) and the final stock exchange rates are known, further differential invoices are created for the purchase order.
Business Process of a Commodity Purchase
Structure
Invoice Transactions for Relevant Invoice Items
In Logistics Invoice Verification, the following additional transactions are available for items relevant for differential invoicing.
Provisional invoice
The invoicing process starts with the provisional invoice.
Differential invoice
The provisional invoice can be followed by one or more differential invoices.
The price update of an invoice item can lead to a positive or negative difference amount in relation to the items in the previous document. Depending on that, you post the total difference amount of all invoice items as an invoice (positive difference) or as a credit memo (negative difference).
Final invoice
As the last invoice document, the final invoice closes the differential invoicing process.
For more information, see Invoice Verification for Differential Invoicing.
Display of Items Relevant to Differential Invoicing
When you enter an incoming invoice in the
Enter Incoming Invoice
(MIRO
) orPark Incoming Invoice
(MIR7
) transaction, theDifferential Invoicing
layout variant is available.The system displays the items relevant to differential invoicing in two lines:
The first line contains the current amount for the item; the second contains the previously invoiced amount. The difference amount for the item (the calculated difference in value between the current invoice and the preceding document) is displayed in an additional field.
When you display conditions for an invoice in the differential invoice, you can also display the difference values compared to the previous document at condition level.
If you use a batch at goods receipt, and you have set invoice verification to be goods-invoice-based, the system displays the batch in the corresponding invoice item. From there, you can call the
Batch Information Cockpit
(BMBC
) transaction, in order to display the batch data.
More Information
For further information about the differential invoicing process, see Differential Invoicing in the Commodity Procurement Process.
Note
Note that there are restrictions on differential invoicing in SAP Enhancement Package 6 for SAP ERP 6.0 (SAP_APPL 606). For more information about these restrictions, see SAP Note 1584025
.