Use of Invoice Plan in SAP

What is significance of invoice plan and how do we configure in R/3?

Through the use of Invoicing Plan for leasing agreements and such like, you aims to considerably reduce the manual data entry effort in the purchasing and invoice verification (A/P) department.

The invoicing plan enables you to schedule the desired dates for the creation of invoices relating to the planned procurement of materials or services independently of the actual receipt of the goods or actual performance of the services. It lists the dates on which you wish to create and then pay the invoices.

You can have the system create the invoices automatically on the basis of the data in the purchase order, thereby triggering payment of the vendor. It is also possible to enter the invoice for an invoicing plan manually. It is recommended that the invoice shall be created via Logistics Invoice Verification ---> Automatic Settlement --->Invoicing Plan Settlement. This
transaction can also run in the background.

Following are necessary customizings and preconditions for using the Invoicing Plan functionality in SAP -

1) You must maintain the settings in Customizing for purchasing (for example, invoicing plan type, date categories, date descriptions, and date sequence proposals). The related path is IMG ---> Material Management ---> Purchasing ---> Purchase Order ---> Invoicing Plan ......

2) The Purchasing document with FO Document Type (Framework Order) must be used. This document type requires that a validity period be entered in the PO header. This specification is adopted in the invoicing plan, provided that this has been predefined in Customizing for the relevant invoicing plan type.

3) The purchase order item must have an account assignment.

4) The Logistics Invoice Verification must be used.

5) The vendor must have agreed to use the automatic invoice creation facility (since we will use automatic settlement to create the invoice). In this case, the 'AutoEvalGRSetmtDel.' indicator must be flagged in the vendor master record.

Furthermore, once Purchase Order is created with order type FO, ensure that the indicators for GR/IR control have been set correctly on the item detail screen. The Goods Receipt indicator may only be set in combination with the Goods Receipt Non-Valuated indicator. The Invoice indicator must be set. For the automatic creation of invoices, the ERS (Evaluated Receipt Settlement) indicator must be also set. A further prerequisite for automatic settlement is that a tax code must be entered in the purchase order.