Credit Card Clearing (SAP Library - Travel Management (FI-TV))

Credit Card Clearing

Purpose

Credit card clearing is a process for entering individual receipts in Travel Expense Accounting. You can use this process for any individual receipt (hotel invoices, restaurant bills, and so on) that was paid for using a credit card. The following types of credit cards can be used:

Personal Corporate Credit Card with Employee Liability and Payment
Personal Corporate Credit Card with Corporate Liability and Payment
Central Corporate Credit Card with Corporate Liability and Payment

Credit Card Clearing allows you to enter and process individual receipts easily and efficiently. In addition to easier processing, credit card clearing also gives you other advantages:

The currency exchange rates used are the same as the actual rates used by the credit card provider.
The payment and management of trip-related advances is no longer required. This can considerably reduce processing costs.
Useful additional information about the service used (for example, hotel, restaurant, and so on) is available in a standard format. This simplifies the control process for Travel Expense Accounting, and also provides useful information for negotiating with service providers.
The use of a central corporate credit card (lodged with the travel agency) allows you to complete full cost entry in travel expenses, and supports the invoice verification process in Financial Accounting.

SAP, therefore, not only supports the entry and settlement of travel expenses but also the subsequent control and verification processes in Financial Accounting. More information about each of the process variants is available in the individual detailed descriptions.

Integration

If you use both credit card clearing and SAP Travel Planning, it is important to note that when you create a travel plan, the expected receipts are not automatically entered into the travel expense statement (generated in the background). If they were automatically entered into the expenses statement, running credit card clearing would mean that these receipts were added to the travel expense statement again, leading to duplication. As credit card clearing always supplies the most up to date information, you should not enter a value in table TA22A for receipt types that are assigned to trips via credit card clearing.

Process Variants

MySAP Financials supports four different process variants in credit card clearing:

Personal Corporate Credit Card with Settlement via Employee's Private Bank Account

Personal Corporate Credit Card with Settlement via Employee's Private Bank Account and Central Corporate Account for Approved Travel Expenses (Split Payment)

Personal Corporate Credit Card with Settlement via Central Company Bank Account

Central Travel Center Credit Card with Settlement via Central Company Bank Account

Prerequisites

In order to be able to use credit card clearing, regardless of the process variant selected, you need to fulfill the following requirements: The special Customizing settings for the individual process variants are listed correspondingly in each of the process variant descriptions.

Credit Card Requirements

- The travel expense accounting currency for the employee must correspond with the currency used for credit card settlement.

- The credit card supplier must provide the data in a standard format defined by SAP and the credit card companies.

General Customizing Requirements in Travel Management

- You have activated characteristic CCC for the relevant organizational unit in feature TRVPA.
Activity: Set up feature TRVPA for travel expenses parameters.
View: Maintain feature TRVPA: Decision tree

- You must check whether a code is maintained for your CCC (Credit Card Company).
Activity: Maintain Credit Card Company Table
View: Define Credit Card Companies

- Check that an internal travel expense type is assigned to each credit card transaction key, and that the appropriate process type has also been defined.
Activity: Define assignment table for credit card clearing.
View: Assign credit card transactions to travel expense types.

Credit Card Clearing Process Flow

The following diagram shows the credit card clearing process for process variant 1 (Settlement of credit card charges using a personal corporate credit card reimbursed via the employee's private bank account (employee liability). The numbers represent:

The individual process segments of credit card clearing

The process segments (4) and (5-7) are performed in Travel Management Process segments (2), (3) and (8) are external processes.

The optimum run time of the individual process segments in the overall business process

Credit card clearing is initiated when the employee pays an individual receipt for 500 Euro (for example, a hotel bill) with a credit card (1).

The service provider (for example, the hotel) invoices the credit card company for the transaction paid for with the credit card (2).

The credit card company reports the employees’ transactions to their company regularly via data medium exchange (3). The company then imports the credit card transactions into SAP Travel Management using the credit card clearing function.

After the employee returns from the trip, they enter their travel expense statement and enter any additional trip information to the statement or to the preliminary credit card receipts. The employee cannot manually enter individual receipts for items paid for with a credit card (4).

The following steps then take place within the company:

After they have imported the credit card transaction file, the company approves (5) the travel expense statement, transfers the information to Financial Accounting (6) and reimburses the expenses by making a payment to the employee's personal bank account (7). This process is shown in The Overall Travel Management Process.

The credit-card company debits the employee’s bank account (8).

See also:

Processing Credit Card Transactions