Intra-day bank statements in SAP

When we say “Bank statement”, we most often mean the statement that bank provides to us (person or company) with a list of transactions from the past. These are the transactions that already happened on account. They affect available balance on account. They cannot be changed or back-dated.

When talking about bank statement formats, these are SWIFT MT940, BAI2 and many other country- or bank-specific formats, and even FINSTA IDOCs. SAP provides multiple options to upload these bank statement formats.

But these end-of-day statements are not the only ones that banks may provide, and they do provide. There are also intra-day statements.

These intra-day statements contain the information about transactions happening on the account during the day. They are not necessarily confirmed, as there is a chance that some issues may cause the cancellations or delays. But there’s still a chance that these transactions will make their way to the end-of-day statement, which we will receive tomorrow. There can be multiple intra-day statements covering transactions at different time intervals.

Why are they needed? Mostly for cash position reporting. If your company trade volumes are measured in millions, every single transaction may affect your cash position both in negative and positive direction. Treasury needs to plan cash position and act quickly to avoid unnecessary overdrafts and bank charges.

Another use of intra-day statement is to give the credit control team idea about customer payments. Why would you need to chase the customer payment, if your bank already informs you about the transfer to your account?

What are the formats available for intra-day statements? Just to name the most common: SWIFT MT942 plus the same BAI2, and also FINSTA IDOCs. Of course, BAI2 and FINSTA have special indicators to distinguish end-of-day and intra-day files. SWIFT MT940 and MT942 are very similar, but even they have their unique tags, which only appear in one format, but not in other.

What can you do with intra-day statements in SAP? Of course, you can import the intra-day statement files into SAP. But SAP understands that these transactions can yet be cancelled, and it does not make any postings based on intra-day information. Instead, standard SAP program can create Cash Management Memo Records (Payment advices). These memo records can then be viewed in Treasury reports.

The pre-requisite for Memo Records (Payment advices) creation are checkboxes “CM Payment advice” and “Account balance” on the selection screen of MT942 import. Another important thing to remember is that SAP only accepts SWIFT MT942 statements in “Field 86-structured” format. Is your file coming non-structured? There’s a workaround. SAP Expert will be happy to advise if you ask.

Are you using intra-day statements in your company?