As soon as an account has reached the last dunning level, you can issue an internal dunning notice. You define the text for this internal dunning notice in the form for the last dunning level. You then send this dunning notice to the legal department, which in turn initiates legal dunning proceedings. The legal department enters the date on which the legal proceedings were initiated in the master record of the account. This field (Legal dunning proceedings) is located in the company code-specific area of the master record of your business partner, under Correspondence.

In Germany, legal dunning notices are only issued for the sum total of all due payments that have been dunned at least three times. In other words, the legal notice covers those items that have reached dunning level 3. To display this total separately in the legal notice, use the field Total of due items by dunning level, found in the dunning procedure specifications. The entry you make in this field determines the dunning level above which all due items from a single account should be totaled. For legal dunning proceedings, enter a 3. A total is then created for all items that have a dunning level greater than 3.

An account for which legal proceedings have been initiated is not included in the dunning run until a new open item is posted and the end of the dunning interval is reached. The legal department is informed of all postings to the account with an internal message. For this to apply, you have to define a form in the field Legal dunning proceedings under Dunning texts in your dunning procedure.

You can use a separate form or your standard form. You must store the text for the internal message in the standard form under text element 520 (dunning text for legal dunning proceedings).

The dunning level in the master record and item is not changed during the dunning runs. The dunning program only updates the date of the last dunning run.