See how, why, and where you can configure customer evaluations to improve your standard SAP system reporting for your Accounts Receivable team.

Key Concept 

Customer evaluation reports are located within the Accounts Receivable (AR) standard reports. When users do not have access to SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) or SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) systems, this suite of customizable reports can play a major role in the AR department’s reporting. Even if a company does have SAP NetWeaver BI, it provides the high-level reporting that you would get from SAP NetWeaver BI, but the ability to drill down into customer accounts to a line item level. It may not be real time but is based against a run date.
 
Customer evaluations provide a simple reporting structure to fit your users’ reporting requirements with drill-down functionality. I’ll show you the different types of reporting, the situations in which each would be appropriate, and then how to configure them in your SAP R/3 or SAP ERP system.

Customer evaluation reports are an often overlooked element of Accounts Receivable (AR) reporting. An evaluation looks at an evaluation type and a reporting parameter (e.g., accounting clerk). For example, one evaluation type is the due date analysis report. A due date is derived from a customer invoice. A customer invoice includes a payment term, say 30 days, from the date of the invoice. An invoice is deemed not due if you run the report less than 30 days after the invoice was created, and deemed due if you run the report more than 30 days after the invoice was created. Therefore, the report shows the cash collectors (the users who collect the cash) and the total amount outstanding (unpaid) for them to collect as a total or per customer. The report provides the ability to drill down into the customer account to view line item detail.

The evaluation process can calculate the days sales outstanding (DSO) figure and drill down by other key reporting figures such as accounting clerk, credit representative group, and reconciliation account. The system works out the DSO for you, removing the month-end task of calculating and publishing it. It also enables the users who collect the cash to analyze their largest customers with the highest DSO, so they can target those customers and help reduce the DSO month after month.

To read the full article, as published in Financials Expert online, please click here.