Alternative payee in document at SAP® vendor invoices
Alternative payee 1
In addition to the classical use of One-Time-vendors, which we have already discussed on 03.02.2014, SAP® systems offer the functionality of an "Alternative payee in the document”.
Initially vendors with this feature set are treated like a normal vendor in the SAP® system. This means that for example bank accounts are stored in the master record of this partner and will be used for payments. Nevertheless you get the possibility to change the payee and the bank account within the document. In this respect, the use of such vendors also has to be considered being critical just like traditional One-Time-vendors.
Technical details
Starting point is the vendor master data record that offers the option to add individual information to a vendor (figure 1) in the control screen.
Technically spoken, field XZEMP in table LFA1 (Vendor master record – general part) will be switched and gets the value „X“ if the check mark is set to „Individual Spec.“.
Alternative payee 2
For our case study we have created vendor „100037 XZEMP test company“ and checked that option on the screen.
If an invoice is posted to that specific vendor, it will be performed like in the standard process with transaction MIRO or FB60 and up to now does not have to be seen as critical process. In the system, the invoice itself is a normal transaction to a usual vendor. (figure 2)
Alternative payee 3
At this moment in time we do not see any entry in the table BSEC (On-Time Account Data for Document), as the standard information of vendor 100037 will be used for this transaction.
If you double-click on the line with the vendor transaction (usually posting key 31 – invoice), you will jump to the details of the invoice transaction line. If you now choose menu item „Extras -> Alternative Payee”, you can enter the payee data individually (figure 3).
Alternative payee 4
If you consider to fill in some mandatory fields, it will be possible to enter own payee data that will only be valid for this transaction and therefore give this transaction the same critical characteristics as a One-Time-Vendor posting (figure 4).
Alternative payee 5
This is also detectable afterwards by using menu item „Environmentfield -> Document Changes“, whre you can see all changes done to a document.
Looking at the changed information like bank account, bank country etc., it is pretty obvious that this change is a critical one.
Individual changes can be seen in the details (double-click on the individual fields). Thus it is possible to do further analysis on the level of SAP® raw data.
Finally, let us take a look on table BSEC. We can see that the SAP® system records changes of payee data also in the table of One Time Vendor detail data (figure 5).
Alternative payee 6
The affected document line item also includes indicator the value „X“ in the field XCPDD „indicator address and bank are set individually“ (figure 6).
Alternative payee 7
Conclusion: if you only rely on the existing indicator in the master record (technical field „XCPDK“) during the testing of One-Time-Vendor postings, it is possible that a transaction, like shown in the article, will not be found.
The indicator "alternative payee in the document" is not passed from the account group of the master record like the One Time Vendor indicator. So it can be changed in the master record anytime. In addition to the regular control which vendor has set this indicator, you should also analyze transactions in the accounting tables that might have been affected by this.
Contact the author under the usual social networks XING and LinkedIn and use the following link if you are logged in:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/martin-riedl/6/2b5/979