Working as a FICO consultant on a number of different projects, I noticed that nearly all of my clients had a common issue: The GR/IR (goods received/invoice received) account. In theory, you raise a purchase order, the goods arrive, and you post a goods receipt. This acts as an accrual posting between costs or stock and the GR/IR account. If the quantity on the invoice equals the quantity posted in the goods receipt, the GR/IR should clear down to zero. Regardless of whether the quantities match, if the price doesn’t match the invoice could be blocked for payment.
On occasion, users couldn’t understand why a balance remained on their GR/IR account or why an invoice continued to be blocked for payment when they thought that the process had completed correctly. Often at the year end their GR/IR account had accumulated a large balance, which the accountants struggled to analyse for the resolution of any errors.
Somehow I always ended up involved not only in helping tidy up the account, but also explaining quite a lot about the process. I thought it would be a good idea to put everything I knew about it down in one place; an SAP PRESS E-Bite.
My E-Bite (link below), explains how the whole invoice verification process works and gives tips on how to optimise the flow. It begins by outlining the key settings in the vendor, material, and GL account master data, and the effect that they have on the behaviour of the purchase order and goods receipt, and therefore the way the matching takes place with the invoice and credit notes.
I noticed many users were either unaware of the different document types or unclear on which to use when. For example, when to use a credit memo and when to use a subsequent credit. Using the wrong document type may inadvertently create a balance on the GR/IR, where one did not exist before, or not clear one that should be cleared.
One chapter of the E-Bite explains the financial postings of all the documents and another goes through various reports and gives tips on how best to analyse the GR/IR account. Just because there is a balance on the GR/IR account doesn’t necessarily mean that the invoice is blocked for payment; nor does a payment block mean that there is a related balance on the GR/IR account.
I firmly believe that, where possible, you should correct errors at the source, so, if for example, a purchase order price is incorrect, it’s usually best to proactively make the corrections to the purchase order and/or the material/purchase info record. If a goods receipt or invoice is incorrect, simply removing the payment block risks having the incorrect stock, leaving a balance on the GR/IR and affecting the moving average price etc.
There are a number of scenarios where it may not be possible to correct the error at the source, but the good news is there are various transactions in SAP that you can use instead. I explain in my E-Bite which ones to use when.
My (non-SAP) sister was very excited when she heard that I had a publication with my own ISBN number. I don’t know if she was expecting the next JK Rowling, but when I explained what it was about, she looked blankly at me and said “err -that’s not exactly going to fly off the shelves!” However; I do hope it is useful to some people, (other than for bed-time reading), and that there may be helpful information inside that not everyone is aware of.
https://www.sap-press.com/invoice-verification-with-sap-payment-blocks-in-grir-accounts_4052/