Use

The creditworthiness of a business partner provides information on the business partner’s payment history and influences the selection of activities for dunning and/or returns and also the calculation of charges. Various different business transactions, such as returns, dunning notices, installment plans, and write-offs update the creditworthiness in the system automatically. You can also transfer a creditworthiness record from external systems or manually. The current status of a business partner’s creditworthiness is determined as a weighted total on the basis of the creditworthiness figures recorded over the last 48 months. You define the monthly weightings in Customizing. A creditworthiness of zero means that the business partner has an excellent payment history. The maximum value is 9999.

The level of creditworthiness depends on:

The creditworthiness figure is adjusted if a dunning notice or return is reversed.

Prerequisites

Time-dependent weighting

To determine the weighted total you have to make a time-dependent creditworthiness weighting in Customizing (see IMG structure  Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable Business Transactions Dunning and/or  Returns Define Time-Dependent Creditworthiness Weightings).

Dunning

If you want to use creditworthiness determination, enter the dunning activities and/or dunning charges in conjunction with a creditworthiness figure. The dunning activity run reads the current creditworthiness of a business partner and selects the dunning activity and dunning charge where the creditworthiness determined is greater or the same as the creditworthiness value defined in Customizing.

You can define a creditworthiness weighting in the dunning levels of dunning procedures. Once dunning has taken place, the creditworthiness figure of the current month is increased by this number.

You can define the creditworthiness figure in Customizing in each dunning procedure and dunning level (see IMG structure  Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable Business Transactions DunningNotices Configure Dunning Proce dure and Configure Charge Schedules for Dunning Procedure).

Returns

If you want to use creditworthiness determination, enter the returns activities in conjunction with a creditworthiness figure. During returns processing, the system automatically determines the creditworthiness of a business partner, and, depending on this creditworthiness, the system selects the returns activity where the creditworthiness value determined is greater or the same as the value defined in Customizing.

You can define a creditworthiness weighting in the returns reasons. Once returns processing has taken place, the creditworthiness figure of the current month is increased by this figure.

You can define the creditworthiness weighting with the returns reason in Customizing (see IMG for  Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable Business Transactions Returns Configure Returns Reasons).

Write-offs

Write-offs can also have a negative effect on a customer's creditworthiness. If you want to use creditworthiness determination, enter the write-offs in conjunction with a creditworthiness figure.

You can define the creditworthiness weighting with the write-off reasons in Customizing (see IMG for  Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable Business Transactions Write-Offs Configure Write-Off Reasons).

Installment Plan

In the Implementation Guide for Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable , under  Business Transactions Deferral and Installment Plan , you can:

Features

The system automatically determines the creditworthiness of a business partner in returns processing and in a dunning run. The creditworthiness influences the activities and the charges levied, provided that you have defined the activities and charges dependent on creditworthiness in Customizing. There is a display and change function for creditworthiness. The features are as follows:

Change documents record any entries or changes that you have made to the manual creditworthiness, as well as changes to the percentage creditworthiness factor. If there is no data record for the current calendar year when you call the Change Creditworthiness function, the system automatically creates an initial record. The initial record contains the current calendar year. All other values in the creditworthiness records are blank.

Activities

To display or change the creditworthiness of a business partner, choose one of the following paths: