A document is posted to financial Accounts for every transaction in SAP Financials. This also helps in future tracking of the postings that are created and their financial impact. All business cycles are mapped in the system and the document entries are created at various steps.

What is Document Clearing?

Document clearing is a process in SAP FI Module to clear open transactions. Open transactions are known in SAP as Open items. Open Items need to be cleared for a transaction to be completed. Open items are incomplete transactions such as invoices that have not been paid.  To clear this open item the process has to be completed and thereby the open item is cleared. For a transaction to be completed it must be cleared. A transaction is cleared when a clearing posting has been carried out for an open item or group of open items,  so that the resulting balance of the items is zero. Open items cannot be archived and they stay in the system until they are cleared.

How can a document be cleared?

SAP has two ways of clearing the open items:

• POST WITH CLEARING
  What is a post with clearing and how does it function?  Let us take a customer invoice post with a clearing function to understand this.

1. An Invoice is posted to a customer account. This invoice is regarded as an open item because it is unpaid.
2. The Customer pays the invoice and the payment is assigned to the open item.
3. The invoice is cleared with the payment and the resulting balance is zero.
   
   
   Let's see how the Accounts are reflected in the System.               
   
   

4. 

Steps involved in a Post with Clearing:

• 1. Enter the Clearing Document Amount.
• 2. Select the open items that are to be cleared.
• 3. If the Amount of the open items equals the amount of the clearing amount the system clears the open items by creating one or more clearing document.
• 4. If the total amount does not match the selected open items the system allows you to post the difference.
• NOTE: A Post with clearing can be carried out for several accounts, account types, and in any currency simultaneously. It can be done manually or automatically with a Standard SAP provided program called APP (AUTOMATIC PAYMENT PROGRAM).
• ACCOUNT CLEARING

Clear Account Function can help you select open items from a single account whose balance in Zero. These selected open items are then marked as cleared and a clearing document is posted. The clearing document Number and date need  to be either set to current or as per user. The Account to be cleared needs to have an open item managed setting  in the Master Data which is a prerequisite.

The Memo and the invoice are selected and the clearing is processed; no separate clearing document is created for the same.

NOTE: Account clearing can be done manually or automatically with a Standard SAP provided program.

How can a Clearing Document be reset?

Users can reset clearing for individual documents. When you reset clearing the clearing data is removed from the line items, which is clearing date and clearing document number.

A cleared document cannot be reversed directly. It needs to be reset first and then it can be reversed.

The changes are logged and can be displayed in history and credit limits are checked and revised if applicable. Which means that if an invoice from cleared items is reset to an open item the credit limit is reinstated to show the change.

When and which transaction clearing is triggered in?

1. An Incoming Payment typically used in Accounts Receivable clears an open debit Amount.
2. An outgoing Payment typically used in Accounts Payable clears an open credit Amount.
3. Credit Memos are cleared.
4. Debit Memos are cleared.
5. Bank Clearing.
6. Bank Reconciliation Statement.

Rahi Shah

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