Settling Transportation Charges on TCM to ECC: no negative charges allowed

[former_member203115]

The background: It's pretty common for a freight cost calculation to include both positive and negative amounts. Start with, say, the base freight charge for $100, and then, say, a negotiated carrier discount for that freight rate of 20%. The discount, of course, shows up as a negative $20 on the charge calculation for a net charge of $80.

TCM works great here. The problem is settling this freight order (really the freight settlement document FSD) to ECC. Once I hit the Save and Transfer button on the FSD the resulting ECC log (sxi_monitor) records an error referring to the negative (discount) amount.

I know that there is a fundamental limitation in ECC for posting negative amounts on freight service PO's (really a negative amount on the Service Entry Sheet). I suspect that this is the problem I am running into.

If I take a different Freight order / FSD and deactivate or mark the discount line as statistical (either way works) the FSD posts to ECC just fine. Of course the discount is missed and ECC overpays the carrier here ($100 instead of $80) so this is hardly an acceptable workaround...

Now my question: this is a huge functionality gap for TM! In my experience it is very common for freight charge calculations to include negative components. In a Marine environment for example not only are there charges and discounts but native calcuations that could be positive or negative (bunker adjustment charges, despatch / demurrage charges) depending on the situation. Has anyone identified any workarounds for this problem?

I have a couple of screen shots available in a Word document if anyone wants to take a look - I don't see a way to attach a document to this posting.

Thanks in advance!

Mac McLarin

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mac McLarin

Let me explain my scenario, we have Freight order(Land) delivering goods from location x to location y.

Where in There is Freight Agreement with Carrier with simple calculation sheet, fixed charge of 500 Euros

Base Freight-Base

Now discount provided by carrier of 10% on Base Freight, This we maintained as DISC "Charge Type"

Charge Subcategory : 710000(Discount)

Charge Category: Basic Freight

Positive/Negative: Positive or Negative

Value Type: Absolute or Percentage

Now, Charges are calculated in FO, with manual entry of charge line DISC and with % -10 as currency, reference line as Base Freight Charge line

Now I get new charge line with negative quantity and

Rounded Total Amount in Document Currency: 450 Euros (500-50)

When i save and transfer, i could see PO and SES getting created with no problem

In our SES , we have two lines as planned services

TM_FB00

TM_DISC

Gross prices as 500,00 EUR & 50,00- EUR

Is this what you are expecting, or is there any complex calculation involved

We are on ERP EHP5 SP6

and TM 8.1

Regards

Vinod

[former_member203115 · Accepted solution]

Hi, Vinod - Thanks for your note. This is exactly the right scenario. What did you do to allow the -50 posting in ECC? I can't make this work on our side. We are also using TM 8.1 and I believe at a similar level on ECC.

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

Vinod and Mac,

Which SPs for TM 8.1 are you both up to?

Regards,

Mike

[former_member203115 · Accepted solution]

Hi, Mike. We are at SP 2 on TM 8.1. At least this is how the system status is set for SAPTM:

SAPTM 101 0002 SAPK-10102INSAPTM

On ECC (I forget how this maps to service packs).

SAP_APPL 605 0006 SAPKH60506 Logistics and Accounting

To me this is an issue on the ECC side as (for once) TM is behaving itself.

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

Hi Mac,

The SAPKH60506 refers to ECC(or ERP) 6.0, EHP (Enhancement Pack) 5, Service Package 6.

Regards,

Mike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi McLarin

We have defined the Cat.Code/Sub Cat.Code/Charge Type same as defined in TM and attached it to activity number

TM_DISC and Account Assignment Centre "K"

We are using procecdure MS0000 for our Doc category : purchase order in variable condition schema for external service

For the above, check the condition type you are using like PRS etc and make sure in the control data 1, the Plus/Minus field is empty means both positive and negative values are allowed

Regards

Vinod

Edited by: Vinod Kumar Pedapati on Feb 13, 2012 7:30 AM

[former_member626053 · Accepted solution]

Hi

In this case if the Vendor in the V.Master is checked for the Service based invoice verification then it will not allow to post the FSD having negative charges into ECC.You can try the same by unchecking this checkbox and retest the same.

Do post your comments once you test it.

Thanks

[former_member203115 · Accepted solution]

Sanjeev - that did the trick. Amazing what one little checkbox can do. I must have missed that little detail in the documentation (meaning that TCM settlement is really "not" service-based invoice verification?

Thanks very much! Problem solved...

[agentry_src]

Hi Mac,

I would strongly urge you to enter a ticket to report this problem in ECC. We will need at least a work around for this issue, but it is also possible that there is already an SAP Note available.

Regards,

Mike

[former_member203115]

Hi, Mike - totally agree that this needs to be addressed by SAP. As it happens I posted a note in OSS just prior to posting the note here. Was just hoping for some additional insight by the user community. Quite honestly I'm not expecting a positive response from SAP (though I would love to be wrong here).

Mac McLarin