Account Assignment
When you post an invoice, the system selects the accounts to be posted. Account assignment is based partly on your entries when you create an invoice and partly on information stored in the system.
To post invoices correctly, your system administrator must define the accounts in the chart of accounts and the actions to be taken for the different postings when the SAP system is being installed in your company.
The SAP accounts are defined in a chart of accounts. The following accounts are particularly important for Invoice Verification:
For each vendor there is a separate account in the sub-ledger to which all amounts concerning this vendor are posted. A posting to the vendor account is not the same as a payment. Payment is only executed when the Financial Accounting department posts the vendor's payment to a bank account, for example.
In the SAP system, there is no separate account for each material. Instead, different materials with similar features are grouped together in a common account (for example, raw materials, acids). The account relevant for a material is defined in the system when the material master record is created.
The GR/IR clearing account is an intermediate account between the warehouse stock sheet account and the vendor account. At goods receipt, the net invoice amount expected is posted from the stock account to the GR/IR clearing account. This posting is then cleared by an offsetting entry on the vendor account at invoice receipt.
The following example shows a simple type of invoice posting.
When you post the goods receipt, the system executes the following account postings: The value of the delivery (net order price x quantity of goods received) is credited to the warehouse stock account. The GR/IR clearing account is debited with this amount. When the invoice is posted, the GR/IR clearing account is cleared and the vendor account is credited.