Interfaces to External Billing Systems

Purpose

To efficiently receive and process data from an external billing system (EBS) and to effectively execute mass data transfer, you can use the interfaces to external billing systems provided in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable.

Using the interfaces to external billing systems, you can:

Transfer billing documents and optionally update data to CO-PA
Set an archive link to optically archived invoices or archive external documents
Transfer invoice reversals
Transfer open items to the EBS for printing on invoices

Implementation Considerations

IDoc technology is used for transferring business data from the external billing system to Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable. IDoc technology is a standard communication method in SAP systems and supports the exchange of data with non-SAP systems or other SAP systems.

Or instead you can control the interface for billing document transfer using the SAP Exchange Infrastructure . In that case, XI messages are sent to the ERP system through a central integration server. For ease of processing, the system transfers these XI messages to IDoc containers in the ERP system, so that the posting information can be processed further in the same way as if the standard IDoc interfaces had been used.

It follows that you therefore always need to set up IDoc interfaces if you plan to use interfaces in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable. Once implemented, the FI-CA interfaces need little or no maintenance.

For more information, see the section XI Interfaces . Also see SAP NetWeaver Library under Start of the navigation path Process Integration by Key Capability Next navigation step SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure End of the navigation path and SAP NetWeaver Library under Application Platform by Key Capability Platform-Wide Services Connectivity Components of SAP Communication Technology Classical SAP Technologies (ABAP) Next navigation step IDoc Interface/ALE .

Features

Using these interfaces, you can transfer invoices that were created in an external billing system to Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable and automatically post them as open items. In addition to the invoice data, you can optionally transfer additional information for Profitability Analysis (CO-PA) such as characteristics, quantities, and revenues of the settlement documents, making this data automatically available for contribution margin accounting. Standard interfaces are available for the following processes:

Transfer of Invoice Documents You can transfer invoice documents using IDoc. Another option is to use the XI interface FICAExternalBillingNotification_In .

Linking Documents to Optically Archived Invoices
This interface enables the archived original invoices created by the EBS to be accessed from FI-CA documents.

Transferring Mass Reversals from the External System

Transferring Additional Information for Printing on Invoices
This interface enables open items to be printed on the invoices created in the EBS.

Optimal processing of the normally large data volume (such as in a billing run or reversal run) is achieved through scalable parallel processing in mass runs, which enables you to process intervals of IDocs on multiple application servers simultaneously. By means of a Remote Function Call, the sending system (such as EBS) can start online parallel IDoc processing in a mass activity in an SAP system.

The IDocs enter the SAP system through a port set up especially for this purpose. Further processing of the IDocs is defined through special message types. The process code assigned to a message type is linked to the function modules that process the IDoc data (such as posting the billing documents).