Route 
An object that indicates whether a payment item is to be posted internally or externally:
Internally
The beneficiary is a customer of the financial institution processing the payment. A route serves internally to determine to which account management area payment items have to be posted.
Externally
The beneficiary is not a customer of the financial institution processing the payment. A route serves externally to determine the clearing institute for outgoing payment orders.
A route is determined for each payment item and additionally groups clearing agreements.
Internal routes define which account management area and therefore which account management system is relevant for a certain internal beneficiary of a payment item or for a certain ordering party of a payment item. If a financial institution has two or more internal account management systems, the correct account management system for a particular situation is found. For internal payments items, the system first searches for a customer clearing agreement. If no customer clearing agreement is found, the system searches for a standard internal clearing agreement. Both agreements are directly linked to an internal route.
External routes roughly classify the direction of external payments. External clearing agreements are linked to external routes.
You can set a lock for outgoing processing on the route level, meaning that the processing of outgoing payments for all clearing agreements assigned to the route is temporarily blocked. This lock could be used, for example, to temporarily stop all forwarding of U.S. dollar payments. As a result, the system does not generate any outgoing payment orders for any channel assigned to this route until you cancel the lock.
The system analyzes the route rule set in one clearing area and thereby considers only active routes. If a new route is in processing or for release, the old route is still active. As soon as the new route is released, the old route is replaced by the new route. For more information about the release workflow, see Release Workflow.
If the system cannot determine any valid route because no appropriate rule can be found, Routing Control raises an exception and hands the error situation to Exception Control. This component defines an adequate response for the exception. For more information, see Exception Control (FS-PE-EH). To avoid this kind of error, you can define a default route by creating a rule without conditions. You attach this rule as the last rule in the rule set.
You can manage routes and their rule sets as follows:
On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose 
Payment Engine 
Master Data Routing Control Manage Routes and Clearing Agreements 
(transaction /PE1/RN).
For more information, see Managing Route Rule Sets and Managing Route Rules.
Structure
Route Screen
The route screen is organized in the following screen areas:
Search area
You can enter a text to search for routes currently loaded in the navigation tree. When you run a search, a new node with the result is created in the tree.
Navigation tree
Displays existing routes, clearing agreements, and customer agreements in a hierarchical structure.
Business object
Displays details about the selected route, clearing agreement, or customer agreement organized on tab pages.
Rules
Displays the rules in a rule set associated with the selected route or clearing agreement.
Route Screen
Route Details
On the route screen, you can find the following business object information. This information can differ for internal and external routes. If any of the sections described below only applies to one of these types, the section is indicated as “(internal only)” or “(external only)”:
Header Data
Route information
Contains the route ID, its description, and the release status of the route.
Basic Data
Route status
A route can have the following route statuses:
Active
Inactive
Flagged for deletion
Internal/external indicator
Specifies whether the entry refers to external or internal postings on the recipient side. External postings are postings to external financial institutions, which means that a new payment order is generated and sent to Output Manager. Internal postings are postings to accounts managed by the same financial institution processing the payment.
Lock outgoing payment orders
Indicates whether a route is locked. Payment items that are within this locked route are not released through this route and therefore remain in a queue until they are manually released from the queue.
Bank at Route group box (external only)
Provides details about the external bank, such as bank country, bank key, and account number.
Value Dating group box
Indicates the calendar and the rule set for value date agreement that is used to determine the value date for payment items processed through this route. For more information, see Value Date Agreement.
Integration
Once the system has determined a route, a search for clearing agreements grouped under the determined route is performed. If the system cannot determine any clearing agreement, the route is not used and the system has to determine a new one.
With regard to rule sets, the following applies:
A route rule set consists of one or more rules.
One rule refers to exactly one route. The same route can occur in several rules.
For more information about rule sets, see Rule Set.
Routes are integrated within the Routing Control component. After routing, the payment items are delivered to the Clearing Processing component with reference to a route. The information in this route together with the information in the referenced clearing agreement determine how the system processes the item.
For more information, see Routing Control (FS-PE-RP) and Clearing Processing (FS-PE-CP).