In SAP Sales & Distribution, Billing represents the final processing stage for any business transaction. Billing is linked with Order and delivery processing and information is available at each stage.
Billing transactions can be assigned a specific sales area from where the bill would be generated towards the customer. An interface to Accounting exists from Billing hence company code needs to be associated with Billing document.

Billing Document is always created with reference to a preceding document, either an Order, Delivery or Credit/Debit memo request.Billing documents have following structure.

• Header
  Header data has information valid for entire document like Payment terms, Document currency etc.
• Items
  Items contain data like Material no, billing qty Net value of item, weight volume etc.

Billing document is controlled by Billing Type. Major functions in Billing are controlled by Billing type. Different billing types are provided in system for different business transactions.

• F1 Order Related Invoice
• F2 Delivery Related Invoice
• F5 Proforma Invoice
• G2 Credit Memo
• L2 Debit Memo
• S1 Cancellation Invoice
• IV Intercompany Invoice

Methods used in Billing

• Individual Billing Document :A single Billing document is created for each sales document, example one Invoice per delivery. In copy control routine can be defined to have an individual billing document.
• Collective Billing: Collective Billing combines different documents (orders / deliveries) into a single Invoice document provided certain data specified is common across these source documents. The Header data appearing in billing document must be same.

Invoice Split

Split Invoices are to be created separately according to some predefined criteria even for items originating from same source document invoice split can be used.In copy control requirements can be defined with split criteria to ensure sales orders or deliveries are not combined into a collective billing document.

Integration into Accounting

Integration of Billing Document in Sales & Distribution with Accounting is one of the main integration points in system. Here integration consists forwarding billing data to Financial Accounting (FI –Accounts Receivable) &  Controlling (CO) module. On creation of billing document system can automatically create documents for General Ledger (G/L) in FI-AR, Profit Center, Profitability Analysis (CO-PA) & Cost Accounting. System can post entries from Billing documents to relevant accounts via ‘Account determination’. Costs and revenue can be posted to following accounts

• Customer Accounts receivables.
• Revenue accounts
• Sales deductions
• Accrual accounts for rebates etc.
• General Ledger accounts.

Reference number and Assignment number can be carried from Billing document to Financial document to be used as reference when incoming payments are posted from customer.  Billing document can get blocked for accounting for two reasons i.eif it is set in customizing to block for the billing type or if errors occur in account assignment. System has provided with a tool to analyze errors in account determination with which errors can be corrected and billing document released to accounting. For certain Billing documents or certain scenarios it is required that Billing documents be first checked by relevant authorities prior to releasing it to accounting, in such cases automatic block is setup in customizing.

In integration with Controlling, costs and revenues from billing document data can be transferred to following sub-ledger accounts

• Profit & Cost center
• Extended General Ledger
• Make-to-order Sales orders
• Profitablity(CO-PA)
• Projects

Customization for activation of Controlling area and integration needs to be setup for transfer to take place.

Invoice List

Invoice List is a functionality within billing provided by system to create, at specified time intervals or on specific dates, a list of billing documents, to be sent to a Payer. Billing documents in Invoice list can be individual or collective documents.

Standard system includes two type of invoice lists:

• LR –For Invoice and Debit memo’s
• LG-For Credit Memo’s Invoice