FSCM-DM Customer-Disputed (how to identify)

Question

I know Customer-Dispute cases aren't process integrated with AR, but our company wants them to automatically close when the AR in the Cust-Disp folder clears. Is there a table that I can easily identify if the case is process integrated (disputed item) or not (customer-disputed).
My understanding of Customer-Disputed functionality is that it's way more flexible, not process integrated, and the case is supposed to be initiated by the customer. Does anyone have a different interpretation ? It seems SAP left this one not too clearly defined and it's very confusing  to explain to our users. I want to simplify it if possible. Be happy to hear any other opinions on this functionality. Thanks,,
Joe

Answer 1

Hi Mark,
Your scenario 1 , I assume is a CDIS case that has no AR items. I really can't think of a scenario to create a case with no AR like that but I know it's possible. Perhaps the customer calls with a general complaint not tied to any AR ?... I think all CDIS cases are supposed to be initiated by the customer. That is the key distinction. Every example that SAP provides, it's the customer initiating the CDIS case. I think that is important because then you can report how much AR is in dispute and how much of that was initiated by the customer. I've often thought that maybe they created this mostly for biller direct so that when the customer creates a dispute case it's classified differently. Do you agree that it's  supposed to be the customer initiating the CDIS cases ? I'm not sure I follow scenrio 2, but I know if you want to dispute credit items the system requires a CDIS case. In scenario 3, the original invoice would be linked to the case in the CDIS folder and the CDIS amount would be different. When the original invoice clears this case can be closed automatically because even if they shortpay the residual debit will get a new case. At our company all residual debits get a dispute case automatically after lockbox runs.
The reason our company needs a way to close these automatically is because we have thousands of them, too many to do manually. The system was designed in such a way that residual credits are getting cases after the lockbox runs. That means all unapplied cash is sitting in a CDIS case. I think I've finally convinced them to stop creating cases automatically like that for credits but we still have a ton of CDIS cases.
Another feature of CDIS is to create cases for cleared AR items. We are designing the program that auto-closes CDIS cases to skip certain categories. We wouldn't want to close a case if it was intentionally created with cleared AR items. So I agree that auto-closing does not make sense for all CDIS cases. And these will have to be closed manually.
The problem is that our AR people weren't really trained to know the distinction between CDIS cases and process integrated cases. And SAP doesn't do a great job of clearly explaining CDIS. But I have concluded that the key distinction is it should be initiated by the customer. As opposed to when a customer short pays , that is initiated internally. Interesting to hear your thoughts on the topic as it seems SAP just says here's this new functionality, it's more flexible. But doesn't really tell us the best practice for using it. Thanks,
Joe