NAM Cash Allocation - Manual Payments

Table of contents 

Objective and Scope 

The purpose of this document is to describe the flow to handle payments received from third party customers and how to search all the necessary information for cash allocation process. 

The payments are received on SOLVAY FINANCE AMERICA's bank accounts and OTC AR matches those payments that could not be matched automatically by the system. This procedure describes which steps should be followed in order to track all the necessary information for the cash allocation process. 

This operating procedure (OP) applies to the account receivables of SOLVAY FINANCE AMERICA.

Definitions

1. • SBS: In the current document, “Solvay Business Services” will be replaced by its abbreviation “SBS”.
   • OTC AR: Order to cash Accounts Receivable
   • OTC CM: Order to cash Credit Management
   • CSR: Customer Service Representative
   • OP: Operating procedure
   • 4044: Company Code of PI system for handling Cash Allocation
   • SFA: Solvay Finance America
   • DZ: Customer  payment

Cash Allocation

Bank Statements Extraction

On a daily basis, the Bank electronic files with information about the amounts received on SOLVAY FINANCE AMERICA bank accounts are uploaded into SAP. The system does the first sorting and processes the payments in which there is some valid and correct information displayed on the bank statement. Therefore, all the payments that could not be processed by the system have to be allocated manually by OTC AR.

The first thing to do is to extract the bank statements at the site of the JP Morgan Bank and Citibank (payments received in MXN).

Lockbox Transaction

After downloaded  all bank statement files, payments have to be posted on customer accounts using FLB1 transaction.
If we receive a payment for an invoice that is already cleared against a credit note, we should re-open the credit note and clear the invoice with the payment. The credit note can be deducted by the customer on the next payment.

Open FLB1 transaction:
This screen has to be filled with the last working date: 

Then, click on , afterwards, the following screen will appear:

We have to extract a report from FLB1 on a daily basis before start the cash application in order to verify our Automatic Match made by the system to be considered in our KPI of Auto Cash.

In order to extract this report, please, click on  the following screen will appear:

Then, click on  and select "spreadsheet". This file should be saved on Drive O, Folder "NAM-Daily Reports".

Now, we can start the cash application clicking again on .

The Lockbox transaction is organized as follows:

1. Canadian Receivables (checks and electronic transfers), NAFTA FACA;
2. US Checks, NAFTA FAUS;
3. US Electronic Transfers, NAFTA FAUS;

There are three available statuses: 

1. Applied (Green Sign) 
2. Unprocessed (Red Sign) 
3. Posted on Account (Blue Sign) 

Based on the list of entries not yet posted (red and blue items), the bank and the currency that has to be processed should be selected by double clicking on the item. 

Example:

Remark : As soon as the payments are posted, the amounts become green on FLB1 transaction statement.

Processing Payments Posted on Account (Blue Sign):

To process a payment, click twice on the concerned line and afterwards on the floppy disk . This will have to be done for each blue item.

Having the name of the customer or the invoice number, the system is able to identify the customer account itself. However if all the details are not displayed in the statement, the system is not able to perform the matching. We should search in the JP Morgan Bank Statement, the amount of the payment that need to be posted to get more information about this payment.

In the bank statement below, there is mentioned the customer name and the invoice number:

Then,