Travel Advance Request Payment

[Former Member]

In travel management, my organisation wants to go through the process of travel advance approval and payment before the trip is done. I would need the details of the steps required to

- post the approved request to financial accounting (so there would be a basis for advance payment) before the payment can be done)

- post the travel expenses against the travel request when the trip is completed.

My problem is that the system requires the travel request to be settled before it is transferred to accounting. Settling the travel request means that the travel is completed and that is not what I want to achieve at the travel request stage. Can anyone please urgently help out with this?

[Former Member]

Hi,

In SAP, there are different Scenarios of Advance recording and posting..

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/helpdata/en/b6/cda0e849e911d189060000e8322f96/frameset.htm

in your particular case , you have to use Payment of Advances via Financial Accounting along with workflow for aproval or travel expense manager (whichever suits your organization)

Detail business process and configuration description is already given in above link..

Please also note that settling a trip does not limited for trip completed.

There are two types of settlement of trips (advance Settlement and Trip expense settlement)

Advance can be settle in following trip status:

Request approved and Settled

Whole trip can be settle in following trip status:

trip approved and Settled

I hope it would serve your purpose...

Regards,

Muhammad Umer

[Former Member]

if finds any error in configuration then see below thread..

Regards,

Muhammad Umer

[Former Member]

Hi Muhammad,

Thank you very much for your help this far. I had done exactly what you stated and now I guess you understand better what my problem is. But where I am having issues is with the financial postings that come as a result of transferring both the travel request and the completed trip to FI.

After the travel request settlement (status: Request approved and Settled)

I did the posting run (status now: Transferred to FI and Settled) - The resulting FI document credits the vendor account and debits the travel advance account. This credit in vendor account is cancelled when I do the FI payment run for the approved advance amount.

This whole process works perfectly and I am okay with the way it works.

My major problem comes when the trip is completed, and I need to post all the travel expenses against that same approved travel request.

After the trip expenses are approved and settled I also do a transfer to FI and this is where the problem comes.

The posting run results to 2 FI documents

- the first reverses the previous posting to the vendor account (debits vendor and credits travel advance accounts)

- the second FI document credits the Accured Travel Expense account (with the total travel expense) and debits the individual travel expense items.

For the Scenario I am using for the travel advance posting - Advance via Financial Accounting - the FI documents that are created when the trip is created and transferred to FI is totally different from what is stated in the scenario.

My expectation is that a single FI document should be created which debits the particular trip expenses and credits both the travel advance and staff (vendor) account depending on whether the advance is more or less than the actual expenses. This is exactly what is depicted in the link you sent for the Advance via Financial Accounting- http://help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/helpdata/en/b6/cda10f49e911d189060000e8322f96/content.htm.

My problem is that this does not work in my case and 2 FI documents are created instead of one. Please is there a way you can help me with this?

Thanks.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Overall FI documents shall be 2, one is at the time of advance amount posting and then trip amount posting..

what I understand there are three types of documents creating by system at your side (1 at request posting and 2 at trip posting )

you need to one FI document at the time of trip completion (including advance deduction)

Please note that there could be many reasons where system splits FI document at the time of overall trip posting, For example:

Diffident currency at the time of request and expense settlement. (Advance in USD, Expenses in AED)

Different controlling object at the time of request and expense settlement (i.e. Cost center, WBS etc)

For reimbursable and non-reimbursable amounts, there shall be 2 FI documents.

etc...

Hopes it would serve your purpose.

Regards,

Muhammad Umer

[Former Member]

Hi Muhammad,

Thanks for that. My major problem is not the number of documents created but the accounts that are hit by these documents.

The credit and debit for the travel request works very well, however when it comes to posting of the trip expenses, the initial travel request FI posting is first reversed (this reversal is done by debiting the vendor and crediting advance account) and secondly the trip expenses are credited from Accured Travel Expense and debited from the individual expense accounts (such as hotel, travel costs etc).

My problem is that this financial posting is wrong and needs to be corrected. Can this be done via customising and what is the procedure?

Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi,

Please check your HRP table, (Conversion of Symbolic Account to Expense Account)

There must be 1RR *KP for inorder to send in employee vendor account..

Regards,

Muhammad Umer

[Former Member]

Hello Muhammad,

I have managed to sort the issue. The problem was that I was choosing expense types that were already paid for in the travel expense reporting. This caused the Advance posting to be reversed as all the expenses were already paid for. Choosing expense types that have not been paid for solved all my issues. Thanks for all your help.

Cheers