Pay through Payables

Agents, brokers and other external salespeople are usually paid as vendors. For these participants, Bitta Commission turns a frozen settlement into vendor lines and standard Business Central purchase invoices. Each invoice is previewed and posted only through the standard purchase posting routine, Purch.-Post, and is linked back to the settlement line it pays.

Before you start

• The participant version uses the Accounts Payable payment method and has a vendor: a Vendor No. or an effective vendor link. See Participants.
• In a pay group, the group's Payment Method is Accounts Payable. See Settle commission.
• The settlement is Frozen or Posted.
• For purchase invoices, the settlement's accrual proposal is posted, because the invoices are built from the posted liability. See Commission accruals.
• You need the finance-all security scope.

How the vendor is chosen

When the settlement selects its balances, each Accounts Payable line freezes the payee's vendor as its payment target. The payee is the participant, or the consolidated payee of a payee mapping. The Vendor No. on the participant version wins, then the effective vendor link. Without a vendor, the settlement is refused with BAA-SETTLE-VENDOR. A missing or blocked vendor at invoice time is refused with BAA-ACC-AP-VENDOR.

Step 1: Create the AP export

1. Open the frozen settlement on Commission Settlement and choose Create AP export.

2. The app writes an immutable set of vendor lines and opens Commission AP Exports. A settlement can have one AP export.

3. Choose Vendor lines to review Commission AP Export Lines, or Download AP CSV for the file.

Field	What it shows
Vendor No.	The vendor that receives the payment.
Document Date	The as-of date of the settlement, proposed for the vendor document.
Amount / Currency Code	The payable amount. Blank currency means local currency.
Description	"Commission" with the pay period and the settlement number.
External Document No.	The settlement number and line number, which keep vendor documents unique per settlement line.
Pay Period Code, Participant ID, Settlement Line No.	Where the amount came from.
Trace Key / Entry Hash	The frozen settlement line hash and the seal of the line.

The CSV has the columns batchReference, vendorNo, documentDate, externalDocumentNo, amount, currency, description, payPeriod, participantId and traceKey. Lines paid in another currency or with a guarantee top-up add paymentAmount, paymentCurrency, paymentExchangeFactor and guaranteeTopUp.

The AP export is the reviewable record of what each vendor is owed. Use the file in your own payment process, or continue with step 2.

Step 2: Create and post purchase invoices

1. Post the settlement's accrual proposal. Then open the posted proposal on Commission Accounting Proposal and choose Create AP invoices.

2. On Commission Posting Details, enter the Posting date and choose OK.

3. The app creates one purchase invoice per vendor-linked settlement line from the posted liability, and a Settlement Document Links entry for each. A message reports how many invoices were created.

4. Open Settlement document links and select an AP invoice link with status Created.

5. Choose Preview AP invoice posting to run the standard purchase posting preview.

6. Choose Post AP invoice. The invoice posts through the standard purchase posting routine, and the link records the posted document number and the vendor ledger entry.

Lines are skipped when they already have an active invoice link, were relieved by a payroll clearing journal, or have a recorded payment. One settlement line is paid through one channel. Purchase invoice opens the unposted invoice.

Before preview and posting, the app checks that the purchase invoice still matches the settlement amounts it was created from. A changed invoice is refused with BAA-ACC-AP-INVOICE-CHANGED.

Settlement Document Links

Settlement Document Links is the register of documents created from frozen settlements. Each link is the idempotency record that prevents a settlement line from being invoiced or cleared twice.

Field	What it shows
Output Kind	AP Invoice or Payroll Journal.
Status	Created, Posted or Cancelled.
Settlement Line No.	The line paid. Zero means the whole settlement.
Vendor No., Document No., Posted Document No.	The vendor and the purchase documents.
Posting Date, Amount	When and how much.
G/L Register No., Vendor Ledger Entry No.	The entries the posting created.
Entry Hash	The seal of the link.

To recreate an invoice, select a link with status Created and choose Cancel link. The settlement line can then be invoiced again. The purchase invoice itself is not deleted, so delete or keep it as you see fit. A posted link cannot be cancelled.

Paying outside purchase invoices

If an Accounts Payable line has no AP invoice, for example because you paid it from the AP export file, choose Record payment on the settlement line. An invoiced line refuses this with BAA-SETTLE-PAYMENT-AP-INVOICE: post or cancel the invoice first.

Troubleshooting

• BAA-AP-EXPORTED. The settlement already has an AP export. Open it from AP exports.
• BAA-AP-NO-PAYABLE. The settlement has no payable vendor lines.
• No invoices were created. Check that the accrual proposal is posted and that the lines are not already invoiced, cleared by payroll or paid.
• BAA-ACC-AP-INVOICE-MISSING. The purchase invoice was deleted. Cancel the link and create the invoice again.

What the AP integration does not cover is listed in Known limitations.

What's next

Post the accrual and the follow-on entries: Commission accruals.