SAP Accounting Document Posting Error (Solved)

First, let’s define what an accounting document is. An accounting document is a record of a financial transaction within a company. In SAP, it is created when certain transactions are carried out, such as posting invoices or posting Goods Issue. Accounting is a crucial aspect of running a business – learn why.

Understanding Account Document entries in SAP

For instance, when customer invoice is posted to accounting, it makes entry in customer recivable accounts and balancing entry in the Sales Revenue account.

However, kindly note that when Invoice is posted and accounting document is posted, it doesn’t mean that the transaction is complete.

The customer must make the incoming payment. At this moment that the debits and credits are balanced and the transaction is considered complete. But what happens when it’s not?

Clearing Invoice within f-28 transaction

There are multiple reasons why SAP accounting document may fail to post or clear. Presented below are two steps to help you resolve most of these errors. We trust that these steps will successfully address your current issue.

• Check whether you document needs to be manually posted – Some Accounting documents need to be manually posted.

Whenever you define a billing document in SAP, you can define whether it needs to be posted automatically to accounting. This gets defined in the following path in SPRO – Sales and Distribution -> Billing -> Billing Documents -> Define Billing Types. As you can see, if the posting block flag showed is checked then the user needs to release the billing document to accounting manually.

Documents requiring manual clearing in SAP

Hence for these documents you need to Goto VF02 and Release the document manually to posting.

• Simulate the Accounting Document – For this you can go to the Invoice document and check what is the issue which is causing your accounting document problem with accounting document. To be able to simulate the accounting document, you will need to go to VF02 and then navigate to Environment –> Acc. Determination Analysis.

Simulate Account Document determination error in SAP

The determination mentioned above is based on the settings maintained in transaction VKOA. It utilizes a condition technique and the determination is made by considering the most specific to generic condition records set up in this transaction. Typically, the initial level of determination involves Customer Group, Material Group, and Accounting Key. If this determination fails, it then considers Customer Group and Account Key, followed by Material Group and Account Key.

Releasing billing document to accounting manually

VKOA account determination process

• Problem is related to Accounting Document Clearing and not posting – Remmember that accounting document clearing is dependent on incoming customer payment. If you have not automated your bank entries, you must run F-28 to be able to clear the accounting document.

When a billing document is created, it does not immediately send information to third-party applications. This is because the default SAP system does not consider the mere creation of a billing document sufficient to trigger the IDOCs. The document needs to be released to accounting and reflected in your books to initiate the communication of the IDOCs.

Refer to the screenshot below, where you can see that there is a requirement 62 for the communication of the IDOCs, specifically for the INVOIC example.

Affect of accounting document posting on IDOCs

Hence if your problem is that when you are creating an invoice document but the external system is not able to get the information in forms of IDOCs, it might be a good idea to troubleshoot the error regarding accounting document posting.

Here are some important transaction codes associated with account determination.

Important Transaction Codes

In conclusion, an SAP accounting document posting error can be caused by various factors, such as open items, incorrect posting dates, incorrect document types or numbers, and system errors. To resolve the issue, it is important to first identify the cause of the problem. By following the steps outlined above, you can ensure that you are taking the right steps to correct the issue, resulting in a balanced and complete transaction.

As an SAP consultant, it is essential to know how to post and clear an accounting document in order to keep the company’s financial records accurate and up to date. Following are some of the steps that you can take to improve your knowledge on this subject.

Analyzing a completed Invoice – Find an invoice which has completed it lifecycle. Navigate to Accounting Document. See the entries which are made. Check if there is a clearing document. If so, then see how the entries are balanced and customer recievables are cleared.

Run an OTC Cycle – Create a new sales order and run the delivery creation, post goods issue and invoicing. Run transaction F-28 to create customer payment. See the accounting documents created during PGI, Delivery, Invoice and clearing.

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