Adapt and Automate SAP Dispute Management

by Juergen Weiss, Consulting Manager, SAP

Understand the concept of case records in the context of SAP Dispute Management and learn how to adapt the layout of a dispute case. Look into the implementation of Business Add-Ins within SAP Dispute Management to set up automatic follow-up activities such as determining the next processor of a dispute case.

Categories: Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable, FSCM, Financials, Tools

Key Concept

SAP Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) is a suite of applications that helps companies optimize working capital levels, streamline receivables, and eliminate excess costs for payments. FSCM addresses virtually every process within the cash-to-cash cycle and provides information to corporate employees as well as customers and vendors. All applications use SAP NetWeaver technology and are integrated with SAP ERP Financials and other components.

Handling payment deductions is a major hassle for most companies. It can cost approximately $150 to process one receivables-related dispute and solve the underlying issues. These disputes could arise because of various reasons: Customers might complain about pricing or service issues, or they could simply decide to deduct a certain invoice amount without proper authorization.

SAP Dispute Management is an application designed to streamline the manual processes involved with receivables-related dispute cases. One core component used by Dispute Management is SAP Case Management, an application for processing any incidents. The system displays an overview of all the information relating to a case on one screen and enables electronic forwarding of the case to other users. Because a case always contains an electronic record, Case Management is integrated in SAP Records Management, a component for the electronic management of records and documents.

Note

This is the second part of a series of articles in which I’ll describe aspects of SAP Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) components, including Biller Direct, Dispute Management, Collections Management, and Credit Management. To see my first article, “Set Up Users for SAP Biller Direct the Right Way” (Volume 6, Number 4), go to www.FinancialsExpertOnl ine.com.

I’ll describe the configuration of Case Management and Records Management and show you how to adapt the pre-delivered case record model from the SAP system. A second challenge in every SAP Dispute Management implementation is often the automation of follow-up activities to speed up the processing of payment deductions. The application provides a couple of Business Add-Ins (BAdIs), which are sections in an object’s source code in which you can insert additional functions or statements without having to modify the original coding. I’ll pay special attention to some of these customer enhancements and use an example to demonstrate the flexibility of a BAdI implementation. This article applies to both SAP ERP and R/3 systems.

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