Shipping material accounts and accounting schemes

A shipping material account is used to group packaging item transactions by one or more business partners and, optionally, by sites, packaging items, or effective dates.

You can print overviews of packaging item transaction by business partner to communicate with your business partners about quantities and payments of packaging items.

A shipping material account consists of an ID code, a description, and a shipping material accounting scheme. Optionally, you can specify an external business partner for the shipping material account to indicate that the external business partner is the owner of the packaging materials.

A shipping material accounting scheme consists of these criteria, which are used to link packaging material transactions to a shipping material account:

  • Business partner
  • Site
  • Packaging item
  • Effective date

Of these criteria, the business partner is mandatory.

If you do not specify an item, the shipping material account is linked to a business partner for all packaging items. If you do not specify a shipping material account, the item is not accountable.

Shipping material accounts and shipping material accounting schemes are defined in the Shipping Material Accounts (whwmd4170m000) and Shipping Material Accounting Scheme (whwmd4171m000) sessions. See Setting up shipping material accounting.

Linking a shipping material account (SMA) to packaging item transactions

When LN records a shipping material transaction, LN performs these searches to link the transaction to a shipping material account:

  1. Look for a shipping material account (SMA) that has a combination of business partner, site, packaging item, and transaction date of the transaction.

  2. Look for a shipping material account (SMA) that has a combination of business partner, packaging item, and transaction date of the transaction.

  3. Look for a shipping material account (SMA) that has a combination of business partner, site and transaction date of the transaction.

    If an SMA is found in steps 1,2, or 3, the search is completed, else step 4 is performed.

    Steps 1,2, or 3 can result in an empty SMA, that is, a shipping material accounting scheme in which the Shipping Material Account field in the Shipping Material Accounting Scheme (whwmd4171m000) session is left blank. This means that the item is excluded from accounting for the specific business partner.

  4. Look for an SMA that has a combination of business partner and transaction date of the transaction.

In the previous steps, LN searches for an entry in the shipping material accounting scheme that has an effective date which is the closest to the transaction date. Expiry dates for the shipping material account are not defined. The expiry date of an existing entry in the shipping material account is determined by the effective date of a new entry in the accounting scheme.

Various options are available to exclude specific packaging items from accounting. See Excluding packaging items from accounting.

Related topics