Un-blocking Procurement Card Settlement generated AP Invoices

[Former Member]

Hi there,

We have implemented the Procurement Card solution in SRM 5.0 with an ECC 6.0 back-end system.

The process flow looks (pretty standard) like this:

1. User purchases goods with charge card

2. Card statement loaded to SRM

3. Invoices created (one per card) in back-end (credit vendor account and debit a payment card clearing account). Invoices have payment block of 'x' applied automatically.

4. Simultaneously work items sent to user (nominated on the card master data) to reconcile the purchases to the correct GL / Cost Centre (if default not acceptable)

5. Once reconciled, GL postings sent to back-end to debit the GL / Cost Centre and credit the payment card clearing account

6. Carefully designed clearing program run will clear the payment card clearing account

Our issue is that we have quite a high number of charge card users and hence a high number of invoices generated every time we load the statement. Each one of these invoices is blocked for payment automatically and therefore we have a manual process to follow to unblock these invoices for payment.

Is there an automated unblocking process upon reconcilliation that we are missing?

Thanks

Matt

(Also posted in the SRM area)

[Former Member]

Hello.

It seems that the usual process is to pay the vendor (card provider) by Direct Debit. In which case, it is practical that the invoices remain blocked so that you do not end up paying the vendor twice (via DD and via your own payment program). The invoice will be cleared off against the DD payment on the vendor account once the bank statement has been uploaded into SAP.

Cheers

Matt