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Technical Data

Technical Name of Business Function

LOG_SD_ADVORD

Type of Business Function

Enterprise Business Function

Available As Of

SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Package 3

Technical Usage

Central Applications

Application Component

SD-SLS

Directly Dependent Business Function Requiring Activation in Addition

Not relevant

You can use this business function to improve the efficiency of the management and billing processes used with sales document. It provides new modification management, budgeting and billing features, as well as support for alternative document billing structures.

This business function helps contractors – in particular those operating in the Public Sector – to meet specific legal requirements relating to change management, budget allocation and invoicing. This helps to reduce penalties for noncompliance.

Example Example

Contractors working with US Federal Government organizations must comply with the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR).

End of the example.

This business function also helps to boost the productivity and efficiency of contractors by:

  • Improving cash flow due to faster invoice generation and reporting

  • Reducing manual processes, and consequently creating more time to focus on core business activities

  • Reducing the number of invoice errors due to simplified data entry and maintenance

  • Improving the information quality of system data

  • Increasing the number of contracts that can be supported by SAP, and reducing the number of legacy systems needed

  • Providing access to more accurate cost-accounting documentation for external audit

The technical benefits of this business function are:

  • Reduced implementation and execution costs for contract and billing processes

  • Fewer modifications resulting in lower maintenance costs for custom solutions (Support Packages, test or upgrade) and legacy systems

  • Improved usability through the new Web-Dynpro-based front-end

Prerequisites

You have installed the following components as of the version mentioned:

Type of Component

Component

Is Needed Only for the Following Features

Software Component

SAP_APPL

SAP Netweaver —

Business Intelligence (BI)

As of release SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BI Content Add-On 3 SP08

  • Once you have activated this business function, maintain the necessary Customizing activities in Customizing for Sales. For more information, refer to the release note LOG_SD_ADVORD: Advanced Order Processing and Billing (new) under   http://service.sap.com/erp-ehp   SAP ERP Operations  .

Features

Maintenance of Additional Contract Data

Some contracts, government contracts in particular, require that you document additional key attributes, such as pricing and funding information. You can use this feature to maintain this type of information at both header and item level.

For more information, see Extended Contract Maintenance.

Enhanced Modification Management

Complying with regulations relating to the documentation of contract modifications can be costly, with rework leading to cost overruns, reduced profitability, penalties, and schedule delays. You can use this feature to track selected data, thus ensuring compliance and auditability. Information that might be subject to modification management includes prices, rates, funding data, administrative data, schedules, and specification data.

For more information, see Modification Management.

Funding Data and Limits

Contractors who are subject to compliance requirements regarding the allocation and documentation of funding sources for billable costs must be able to submit compliant invoices. This enables them to avoid penalties and delays in cash flow and provide accurate cost-accounting documentation for external audits.

Example Example

The ACRN (Accounting Classification Reference Number) accounting process is a specific requirement with which all contractors who deal with US Federal Government (defense) organizations must comply. Each ACRN represents a department with a specific budget, and contractors must submit invoices with ACRN-level detail.

End of the example.

You can use this feature to:

  • Maintain customer funding information at header and item level

    Using funding IDs, you define and allocate the budgets of individual customer departments. This information is considered during every resource-related billing run so that the billed amount stays within the budgets.

    In addition to ensuring compliance with legal requirements, the ability to process funding IDs enables automated EDI processes. This reduces invoice errors and manual processing time.

  • Define contract-specific limits at header and item level using standard pricing conditions

    Contract limits are considered during every resource-related billing run. The integrated support of limits enables the automated validation of billable amounts, which reduces invoice errors and makes budget consumption more transparent.

For more information, see Fund Assignment and Funding Limits.

Enhanced Resource-Related Billing

Complying with billing regulations can be costly, with rework leading to cost overruns, reduced profitability, penalties, schedule delays, and slower payment. The inability to create inception-to-date (ITD) billing documents, for example, results in excessive manual overheads. This is time-consuming and error-prone, while difficulties creating backups of billing data result in customer audits, general mistrust of the data, and ultimately in slower payment.

This feature enhances standard billing processes as follows:

  • All the costs accrued from the start date of the contract up to the billing date are priced using the latest rates, including costs that have already been billed. This is referred to as inception-to-date or ITD billing. The values that have already been billed (ITD billed values) are subtracted from the current cumulative total, and the difference is billed to the customer.

  • ITD billed values from previous calculations are stored and can be retrieved on various levels of detail, including cumulated ITD.

  • New reporting functions in ERP and BW can be used to display ITD billed values at sales-document level.

In addition to ensuring compliance with certain billing requirements, this feature increases confidence in the billing process, speeds up invoice creation and customer payment, and reduces the number of invoice errors.

For more information, see Enhanced Resource-Related Billing.

Alternative Billing Structures

The standard software does not allow contract managers to have independent views of a project hierarchy. This means that the work breakdown structure (WBS) used for logistical planning and execution must also be used for billing. However, you can use this feature to create an alternative structure for billing. You can assign WBS elements to multiple contract line items on a percentage basis, as well as across contracts and project definitions. These assignments are used during resource-related billing to determine what percentage of actual costs assigned to which WBS elements is passed to the billing request.

This alternative structure provides contract managers with the flexibility to structure projects in line with their operational management objectives. It also increases the number of contracts that can be supported by SAP, and reduces the number of legacy systems needed to maintain these contracts.

For more information, see Alternative Document Billing Structure.

More Information

For more information about the new BI content available for this business function, see SAP Help Portal at   http://help.sap.com   BI Content   SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BI Content Add-On 3 SP 09   Customer Relationship Management   ERP Analytics   Analyses for Contract Budgeting  .