Automatic Payment Allocation of Payment Advices

[FX]

Hello SAP experts,

We are trying to allocate automatically bank statement payments with Bank Payment Advices, but cannot find the proper way of doing it.

We created and released the following Bank Payment Advice with External Reference ID "22502155682001":

We also created Bank Statement on related Bank Account, which created the following Payment Allocation:

You can see that the Memo Line contains the exact same reference "22502155682001".

Also, in the Memo Line Analyzing Rules, I have created a comprehensive set of rules, so that this reference get matched on many different rules, and simulation shows this is happening correctly.

However, when I click on Actions > Propose on the Payment Allocation, even if the bank advice is visible in the Open Payments, the system does not manage to automatically allocate the payment.

Also, KB article 2373026 seems to be stating that automatic allocation should be working if Payment Advice ID is exactly similar to Memo Line, which is the case here, but still, automatic allocation does not work.

Any idea on what we are doing wrong?

Thanks a lot,

[alexandre_colombo · Accepted solution]

Hi François,

For payment advice automatic allocation the system does not use memo line rules. The system would try to match a payment advice to a payment allocation during the bank statement upload.

For that to happen, The "Advice ID" needs to be the same as the "Payment Reference" (hidden field as defaults in the payment advice) and the the reference given in the bank statement line item being upload (e.g. for MT940 that would be in tag :61:).

Hence, could you please check if the Payment Reference is maintain in the advice and if the same is references in the bank statement line item?

Regards,

Alexandre.

[FX · Accepted solution]

Hello Alexandre,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

I did the changes (I had indeed missed the Payment Reference hidden field) and created a new test, however, the payment is still not allocated. Could you please help me clarify the following:

• Can you confirm that the "Advice ID" field that you mention is the SOAP field glob:BankAdviceBundleMaintainRequest_sync/BankAdvice/ ?
• Do you know which field this is in the SOAP of the Bank Advice Creation webservice? (I suspect glob:BankAdviceBundleMaintainRequest_sync/BankAdvice/PaymentReference/ID but there are so many references I am not sure).
• Does the "Proposal" button in the Payment Allocation have any effect at all? For instance, if I modify my Bank Advice, will the "Proposal" button try again to allocate the payment against that Bank Advice? Or is the allocation happening only when we post the Bank Statement for the first time?
• We are not using MT940, so could you help me locate precisely in which field of the Bank Statement Item the reference should be? Up to now, I was putting it in the first memo line, but maybe I'm wrong?

Thanks,

FX

[alexandre_colombo · Accepted solution]

Hi François,

With regards to your questions in the bullet points:

• For the advice ID (External Advice ID), that would be the XML tag <ExternalAdviceID></ExternalAdviceID>
• As for the Payment Reference, that would be XML tag <PaymentReference> <ID></ID></PaymentReference>
• Yes, the action Create Proposal would have a similar effect as to when uploading the bank statement. It would also search for advices again and match to the payment allocation, if all conditions fulfilled.
• I've attached a screenshot of an uploaded bank statement item with the advice ID referenced. This is from our internal test tenant.

Regards,

Alexandre.

[FX · Accepted solution]

It just worked, this is amazing !

Thanks a lot, you just won us hundreds of hours of manual reconciliations.
I don't know how to express better my gratitude !

Too bad this isn't documented anywhere, we could have done it years ago.... 😞

[FX · Accepted solution]

Hello alexandre.colombo

Thanks to your answer, Automatic Payment Allocation is working very well with Bank Credit Advices with Payment Method "Bank Transfer" (code 05 on the Bank Advice webservice).

However, I cannot have SAP to allocate automatically if the Bank Advice type was using Payment Method "External Payment" (code 20).

When I choose "Incoming External Payment" on the Bank Statement line, and even if the Document ID of the correspond to the External Advice ID, the allocation does not work.

Basically:

• Bank Advice with Payment Method "Bank Transfer" and Payment Allocation with Payment Method "Incoming Bank Transfer" => OK
• Bank Advice with Payment Method "External Payment" and Payment Allocation with Payment Method "Incoming External Payment" => KO

We need to use the Payment Method "External Payment", because Bank Statement Lines sometimes refer to payments on Point-Of-Sales Transactions, for which the only payment method available on the webservice is "External Payment". And my Bank does not have any clue whether transactions that are paid on that Bank Account are input in SAP as Bank Advices or Point-of-Sales Transactions, so cannot choose whether to apply the Payment Method "Incoming External Payment" or "Incoming Bank Transfer" on the Bank Statement Line.

Thanks a lot for your input,

François-Xavier

[THULASI1 · Accepted solution]

can you please provide payload for this one