Supplier Payment Selections

Use the Supplier Payment Selection (28.9.4) activities to process the payment of supplier invoices. The payment selection cycle has the following steps in sequence:

• Create a payment selection. You use the payment selection to define and select the invoices to be paid. This creates a selection with an Initial status.

• Confirm the payment selection. This action generates the postings related to the payments and changes the payment selection status to Confirmed.

• Execute the payment selection. This completes the process and creates the relevant documents and files for sending to the suppliers or your bank. This changes the payment selection status to Transferred.

Note: This step is only needed for electronic file output.

• Confirm the payment with a banking entry, which changes the payment selection status to Closed.

Note: You must execute payment selections for electronic transfers. Confirm payment selections for checks moved directly to the Transferred status—you do not need to execute them.

Apply the Closed status when the final bank statement is confirmed using Banking Entry. For more information on banking entries, see Banking Entry.

Logging information is confirmed for every step, including the user, date, time of creation, registration, and transfer.

A payment selection is always linked to one payment format. You must create multiple payment selections if the payments you want to process reference more than one bank account.

You can, however, split invoice amount over multiple payments by selecting separate formats and amounts on the invoice. When selecting the format for the payment selection, you can then include amounts created in this format from the invoice in the selection.

An invoice must have the following properties to be included in a payment selection:

It must have an invoice status with Approved selected and Locked for Payment cleared.

Its due date must be earlier than or equal to the reference due date used in the selection.

For each business relation, the Customer/Supplier Compensation Allowed field indicates if netting with customer open items is allowed. In this case, the selection activity can act as an adjustment function.

You specify an internal identification code for each payment selection, and create the paper or electronic payment to be sent to the bank. The process of creating bank payment files is described in Payment Format Maintenance.

You cannot modify a payment selection once the payment file is sent to the bank. If the bank refuses the file, you can manually resolve the issue, or repeat the file transfer.

The payment selection is validated before it can be confirmed and again before transfer. A payment selection has one pay date (execution date) that is valid for all linked invoices.

You can create individual and grouped payments. This is controlled by the Individual Payments field on the Payment tab of the supplier. However, you must generate separate payment selections for foreign and domestic payments. In this case, the transfer step generates two payment files.

You can include new prepayments in a payment selection. Only invoices with an open amount—that is, a balance greater or less than zero—can be used in payment selections. You also cannot specify invoices that are already part of another payment selection for the full amount.

See Creating a Prepayment on a Payment Selection for more information.

Multiple selections can be done to create one global payment selection. The system appends new invoices selected to the list of those that are already included.