Credit Rating Check 

Purpose

The credit rating check lets you to check your customer's ability to pay (credit rating) on the basis of evaluations that you have stored in the business partner master for the customer (in the role Payer). You can also use business partner evaluations from external providers (for example, Dun & Bradstreet or SCHUFA).

This allows you to minimize the risk for payments, without needing to check the outstanding receivables in your Financial Accounting system (for example, SAP ERP).

A given business partner evaluation can trigger the following actions:

●     Write a message to the application log as information for the employee

●     Set a user status at header level and/or item level

●     Execute a customer-developed program (BAdI implementation), for example, workflow

Prerequisites

Settings for Credit Management

●     You have created rating procedures with ratings.

●     You have configured the system reactions (message, status) to specific ratings.

●     If you want to trigger a workflow for a specific rating, you must implement a Business Add-In and assign the rating.

●     You have created a rating profile and assigned it to the appropriate transaction type.

To make these settings in Customizing for Credit Management, choose Basic Functions  ® Credit Management.

Settings for Status Management

You have created the appropriate status in a status determination procedure, and you have assigned the status determination procedure to the appropriate transaction type. You have also defined for what user status certain subsequent functions of the order (for example, delivery) are to be blocked.

To make settings in Customizing for Status Management, choose Customer Relationship Management ® Transactions ® Basic Settings ® Status Management ® Change Status Profile for User Status.

Business Partner Master Data

in the master data for your business partner, you have maintained ratings for the role Payer. For more information, see Ratings.

Process Flow

...

       1.      The system automatically starts the credit rating check in a business transaction in one of the following cases:

○     You enter a new payer, or the system has determined a new payer via partner determination.

○     You enter a new item.

       2.      The system determines the rating profile and the corresponding rating procedure according to the transaction type of the order. In the sequence of the rating procedure, it checks whether a rating exists for the payer.

       3.      The system reads the payer’s business partner master to determine the rating that is valid for the order date.

If no rating is maintained for the payer, then the system reads the rating for the next highest partner in the business partner group hierarchy. A group hierarchy of type Pricing must exist for this.

       4.      The system writes the message provided for the rating to the application log.

       5.      The system sets the user status (at header or item level).

       6.      If you have defined a Business Add-In in Customizing, the system executes this BADI implementation.

       7.       

If you want a business partner to be treated differently than is usual, then you must create a separate rating procedure for this business partner and assign the rating to it. The first thing you do is enter this rating procedure into the rating profile. The system then determines the rating procedure for this partner, while continuing on to the second rating procedure for the other business partners (for whom no ratings exist in the first procedure).

Result

Depending on the settings in status management, certain subsequent functions (for example, credit limit check or delivery) are blocked by the status. For more information, see Processing Blocked Transactions.

For optimum risk coverage, you can then run a credit limit check against the customer’s credit commitment in the SAP ERP system. For more information, see Automatic Credit Check.

Example

Customer Bau AG orders 100 tires from you. Bau AG has rating Aa1 – Excellent in their business partner master data.

After the credit rating check, the salesperson receives the following results:

●     The message ‘Customer Bau AG has the rating "Excellent"' appears.

●     The status of the transaction is 'Credit Rating Check OK'.

●     The credit limit check is blocked, since a credit limit check is not required for customers with an excellent credit rating.