Integração do SAP ECC SD e FICA: Por que optar por uma solução específica da indústria?

narasimha.ms4 as you are on community and now we are connected, let me tag you here, as earlier efforts of finding you on platform stood null and void.

It's worth mentioning you here, as below would never up and helpful for others without you.

Disclaimer : Read it like a story, this would be a long blog as it first explains how things work in FICO and why SAP needed to develop FICA to address specific industry challenges.

Blogger says : The following will be helpful if the reader has a basic understanding of the FICO business.

When it comes to billing in SAP ECC SD, the customer number acts as a subledger account, with the data maintained as a payer. The invoice we prepare is accounted for in the account and then in the reconciliation account.

(i.e., any amount receivable along with the total amount and revenue amount are accounted for in various revenue and reconciliation accounts, and the customer account is accounted for/updated for the amounts receivable)

This means that the customer number itself acts as an account in the case of the customer master, and we maintain a complete integrated master record for the customer, involving sales and distribution application data and related accounting data.

That's how it flows in the case of standard accounts receivable.

Standard subledger in SAP and how they work in integration with the general ledger accounting system?

The basic process in SD starts with the processing of sales orders and subsequently a delivery document is created. Where inventory consumption will occur and inventory goods will be issued.

Then a financial accounting document is posted in financial accounting and subsequently we prepare the invoice and it is accounted for in the customer's account as receivable and all invoice details including values for the revenue account are accounted for in the revenue account and the total amount is accounted for in the customer's account

This means that when we account for the customer's account, at the same time the amount is also accounted for in the general ledger account along with revenue and tax accounts.

That's how a kind of integration happens between SD for the generic business process and then financial accounting.

Why do we opt for FICA (Finance and Contract Accounting) instead of standard Accounts Receivable?

Basically, FICA is a cross-application component, it is an industry-specific subledger accounting system used in various industry-specific solutions like ISU, Telecommunications, Insurance.

If we compare it, the business is a B2C scenario, whereas in SD we consider it as a B2B scenario, the business is selling to another business.

Now, in the case of ISU, the distribution company is providing distribution services to a large population of consumers, who will be in millions.

And the business itself has periodic transactions. Every month performing meter reading activity, entering results, validating, preparing a billing document, then preparing an invoice.

Now, if we follow the standard general ledger accounting and standard subledger system like the customer account, what would happen, for every invoice we would have to account for values directly in financial accounting.

But we are processing a large number of invoices, let's say 20k invoices per day, so we can imagine the amount of data we have to account for in financial accounting and during the month let's say 30 million invoices, that will result in 30 million accounting documents.

So, if we continue in the direction of the standard subledger accounting system, it leads to a large amount of data processing and accounting in the financial account.

To overcome this we have FICA. Basically, in the case of ISU, we do not maintain a traditional customer master, because we do not need that information as we are not going to create any sales order, delivery, billing.

ISU has its own business process, so instead of using the customer master record, we use BP. Business partner master record to represent the customer in our system.

But when we prepare a BP, it does not have accounting data, it does not have any connection with the company code, we maintain very general data types

Like what is the name, BP address, identification details, banking details. But it does not have information regarding accounting. Because we do not have to maintain the customer record as we do not have those applications.

So the question arises, when we create a BP, how do we create an invoice and how do we account for it in financial accounting?

That's where we use FICA. Once we create a BP, we create a contract account, this CA (contract account) is the master record, which is maintained due to FICA and for FICA when we prepare CA, we maintain the accounting perspective.

Any information required for the accounting of the contract account, that information is collected and stored in CA. So CA becomes the actual account for the BP.