The Trading area contains the important functions for entering and changing transaction data. You must firstly make the following basic entries for the efficient portrayal of transactions:

When you enter the company code, you determine which division within your corporate group is acting as the contracting party for the transaction.

The product type indicates which specialization of the product category is involved in the current transaction.

You define product types as part of system configuration.

Depending on which product type you enter, the SAP R/3 System calls up a different entry screen. The entry screens are described below.

The transaction type defines which specialization of the transaction category, investment or borrowing, is involved in the current transaction. You define permitted transaction types during system configuration.

If you have specified external number assignment, you should enter the key which uniquely identifies a financial transaction within a company code in the Transaction field under the heading, External number assignment.

Otherwise, the SAP R/3 System will automatically assign a number.

This is where you enter the amount of the transaction. It is used as the basis for calculating interest. In Customizing, you can define your own special characters or other alphabetic values as an abbreviation for thousands or millions. You can use the following input help:

This field defaults to -2, i.e. the settlement date minus the number of days indicated here is used to determine the interest rate fixing.

You can enter up to two calendar IDs in this field. The calendar ID defines the various forms of calendar which are used to determine the interest rate fixing date. You define the calendar IDs as part of system configuration.

Enter the Start of term and the End of term of the transaction in this field. The SAP R/3 System automatically shows the CPU date as a default. You can use the ‘+’ symbol to enter the days and ‘++’ to enter the number of months.

This field indicates the interval in months between the first due date and the next due date (settlement period).

The interest rate is the percentage rate applied to calculate the interest yield on the amount invested or the interest payment for the amount borrowed. This entry is important since it is used to calculate interest.

Enter the reference interest rate here. Generally, it is a money market rate which is used as the basis for the interest rate. In the field +/-, you can enter a markup or markdown on the interest rate.

You need this field to determine which interest calculation method is to be used. You will find definitions for the individual methods in the F1-Help ( you can choose between standard interest calculation methods such as act/360, 360/360, act/365, act/366, 365/360, etc. You can also choose whether the year for the interest calculation is to be calculated using 360, 365 or 366 days.)

You enter the first due date for payment (interest payment) agreed with the counterparty in this field.

You enter the reference interest rate here. The 6 Month LIBOR, for example. You can freely define reference interest rates during system configuration.