Knowledgebase  »  Volume 8 (2009)  »  Update 2

Part 1
Payment Formats Unwieldy? Maintain Them with the Payment Medium Workbench  

by Juergen Weiss, SEPA-Now Consulting (January 2009)

Categories: Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable, Financials, Tools

A/P, A/R, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable

Key Concept

The Payment Medium Workbench (PMW) and the Data Medium Exchange Engine (DMEE) are software components that allow you to create and maintain payment media that you use to send electronic payments to your banks. Although the PMW is used for the configuration of payment media, the DMEE is a graphical modelling tool to modify or define the format of payment media. The two applications, which have been available since SAP R/3 4.6C, were introduced to gradually phase out the classic RFFO* payment medium programs and to allow international companies to configure their own payment medium formats easily. The PMW and DMEE are functionally different from the RFFO* programs and provide more flexible possibilities for cash managers. SAP components other than Financials, such as SAP ERP Human Capital Management and Treasury Management, can also use the PMW.

Managing payments presents an enormous problem to companies that are either present in multiple countries or have to do business with organizations in different countries. Payment formats are not only different from country to country, but are also subject to change over time. Although your SAP system delivers many payment formats, the creation and maintenance of these formats via the classic payment medium programs can be quite cumbersome — especially if you need to adapt these programs to local characteristics.

The Payment Medium Workbench (PMW) reduces the complexity of configuring and creating payment media sent by your organization to your house banks. The PMW gradually phases out the classic payment medium programs (RFFO*, where * represents a country suffix). That means that SAP will create new payment formats only with this application. Some of the PMW’s benefits include:

• Superior control and verification of your payment procedures. The PMW improves the monitoring of the payment process by allowing cash managers to better check that all payments have been sent to the bank and that no payment has been sent twice.
  
  
• Better performance for companies with mass payments
  
  
• Better sort functions with your payment advice notes. The PMW allows you to create payment advice notes independent of organizational units such as company codes or house banks.
  
  
• Easier maintenance, configuration, and enhancement options for your payment formats. The PMW separates generic functions from format-specific mapping and allows you to apply legal changes to payment medium formats faster or implement customer- and bank-specific formats more cheaply.
  
  
• Reduction of complexity. You only need to use one tool and don’t have to work with different payment medium programs that are often hard to maintain and extend.
  
  
• Reduction of development overhead

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