The SD monthly routine exists to make sure nothing goes unbilled and that revenue lands in the right period. Individual documents are processed daily, so the monthly work is largely checking for gaps.
Collective billing
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | Enter selection criteria โ billing date, sales organisation, bill-to party |
| 2 | The list of documents due to be billed appears |
| 3 | Review and exclude anything that should not go |
| 4 | Run collective billing |
| 5 | Check the log and deal with any failures individually |
For high volumes, schedule it as a background job โ running overnight leaves only exceptions to handle during the day.
What to check each month
| Check | Code | If ignored |
|---|---|---|
| Issued but not billed | VF04 | Revenue is missed and lands in the wrong period |
| Ordered but not delivered | VL10 / VA05 | The backlog figure is wrong |
| Documents under a billing block | V.23 | Revenue is unintentionally deferred |
| Documents under a delivery block | VL06O | Shipments stall |
| Unprocessed returns | VA05 (type RE) | Returns are not reflected |
| Incomplete documents | V.02 | Documents cannot move to the next step |
Incompleteness
SD has an incompletion log that records documents missing required fields and blocks follow-on processing.
What counts as required is defined in the incompletion procedure โ making the customer purchase order number mandatory on an order, or preventing delivery where a ship-to party is missing. List incomplete documents with V.02.
Reconciling with FI
Billing normally posts to FI automatically, but faulty account determination causes the posting to fail and leaves billing documents unaccounted.
VFX3 lists billing documents not yet passed to accounting. Documents sitting there point to account determination configuration (VKOA) or to a closed posting period.
Revenue and period
By default, revenue is recognised in the period of the billing document posting date.
Where revenue is recognised on shipment, a gap between goods issue and billing dates puts them in different periods. Around month end, align the billing posting date with the goods issue date; the posting date can be set manually when the billing document is created.
More complex recognition โ on customer acceptance, or over time โ calls for the revenue recognition function, or Revenue Accounting and Reporting (RAR) in S/4HANA.