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Component documentation Credit and Risk Management (SD-BF-CM)  Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Credit management

Purpose

Outstanding or uncollectible receivables can spoil the success of the company greatly. Credit Management enables you to minimize the credit risk yourself by specifying a specific credit limit for your customers. Thus you can take the financial pulse of a customer or group of customers, identify early warning signs, and enhance your credit-related decision-making. This is particularly useful if your customers are in financially unstable industries or companies, or if you conduct business with countries that are politically unstable or that employ a restrictive exchange rate policy.

Integration

If you are using the Accounts Receivable (FI-AR) component to manage your accounting and an external system for sales processing, Credit Management enables you to issue a credit limit for each customer. Every time you post an invoice (created in FI-AR), the system then checks whether the invoice amount exceeds the credit limit. Information functions such as the sales summary or early warning list help you to monitor the customer’s credit situation.

If you are using both the Accounts Receivable (FI-AR) component to manage your accounting and the Sales and Distribution (SD) component for sales processing, you can also use Credit Management to issue credit limits for your customers. You can make settings in Customizing to decide the scope of the check and at what stage in the process (for example, order entry, delivery or goods issue) a credit limit should take place. General information functions are also available for use with credit checks.

Features

If you are using both the SD and FI-AR components, Credit Management includes the following features:

 

Note

You can find information about where to make Customizing settings for Credit and Risk Management in Settings for Credit and Risk Management

 

Risk Management for Receivables

See Risk Management for Receivables in SD for information about managing risks for receivables.