The payment program groups the items due for a business partner into payable groups. This is only possible when all the items of the business partners are considered as a whole - meaning that the selection of the items is not sorted according to contract accounts. Items can be grouped by the following criteria:

In the clearing control in Customizing for Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (under  Basic Functions Open Item Management ), you define which items are grouped as one unit in a clearing activity and in which order the program processes the items in a group or the individual groups. In addition to this standard grouping, you can refine the grouping of the items using characteristics that you define. You make the relevant settings in Enhanced Grouping (under  Business Transactions Payments Incoming/Outgoing Payment Creation ). For information on whether these criteria are taken from the contract account or the open item, see Making Payments Using the Payment Program. You can enter data for your application area in a separate grouping field in event 0600. This data could include, for example, reference details from the contract. You can also lock items for the runtime of the payment program in event 0600. To do this, program a function module and define it in event 0600 in Customizing for Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable under  Program Enhancements Define Customer-Specific Function Modules .