Paul Ovigele, Ovigele Consulting
Delivery costs such as freight, customs, duty, and so on, can be planned on a purchase order so that an accrual is created when that order is goods received. This accrual is posted to an account that is separate from the Goods receipt Invoice receipt (GR/IR) account so that the relevant costs can be tracked separately from the cost of the product. When an invoice is received to match these planned delivery costs, it is a common scenario that the vendor that sends the invoice is different from the one that the product is bought from. For this reason, it is important to know the options for posting these invoices to a different vendor to the one that is proposed from the purchase order.
When you are matching a delivery cost invoice with the purchase order (using transaction MIRO), you need to make sure that you have the correct “Items Indicator” in the transaction (this is the drop-down field on the extreme right of the transaction screen, right above the “Layout” field). There are 3 possible settings:
- Goods/Service Items: Choosing this indicator will display the lines that refer to the product(s) purchased. This is used where the invoice you are posting is from the product vendor and does not include any delivery costs;
- Planned Delivery Costs: Choosing this indicator will display the planned delivery cost lines. This is used where the invoice you are posting is from the planned delivery costs vendor;
- Goods/Service Items + Planned Delivery Costs: Choosing this indicator will display both the lines for the product purchased and the planned delivery cost. This is used where the invoice you are posting is from the product vendor and includes planned delivery costs;
Note that whichever setting you choose will be the default setting for the next time you use the transaction. You therefore need to be aware of the setting before you make a new posting, because you may for example, think that a purchase order does not contain any planned delivery costs (even though it does) because the relevant lines do not appear due to the setting “Goods/Service Items” being set.
You need to choose the “Planned Delivery Costs” indicator when you are posting delivery costs from a different vendor. However, this will not automatically propose the delivery costs vendor in the invoice posting. The system will propose the product vendor (or more accurately, the Invoicing Party in the Purchase Order). Since the purchase order can only have one invoicing party, you cannot set both the product and the delivery cost vendors as invoicing parties. You therefore have two options:
(1) Change the Invoicing Party in transaction MIRO: to do this, you need to go to the “Details” tab of the transaction, and in the “Inv. Party” field, enter the account number of the delivery costs vendor. When you hit the enter key, you will notice that the proposed vendor is now the delivery costs vendor. You can then carry out the posting as normal. This option is carried out by the finance team, and they therefore need to be careful not to post the invoice to the product vendor when they receive a delivery cost invoice from a different vendor.
(2) Set the delivery costs vendor in the condition of the purchase order: When the delivery cost condition is entered in the purchase order, you can select the condition line and click on the “Condition Detail” button (which looks like a magnifying glass) and enter the delivery cost vendor in the “Vendor” line of the ensuing screen. This way, when the finance team selects the “Planned Delivery Costs” indicator, the delivery cost vendor will be proposed as the invoicing party.
Note that you can also enter the delivery costs vendor at the goods receipt stage. To do this you need to enable the setting in the condition type of the delivery cost. Go to transaction M/06 and in the 'Control Data 2' section change the "Vendor in GR" field to "1"(Entry possible if vendor not maintained) or "2"(Entry always possible).
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