When services cannot be calculated at a fixed price—such as maintenance, consulting, or customer-specific manufacturing—cost-based billing is used. With the Dynamic Item Processor (DI processor), SAP offers a powerful standard framework in ECC and S/4HANA that bundles planned and actual costs from different sources and automatically transfers them to billable items.
Despite its long-standing availability, the DI processor is often not used to its full extent in practice – and thus its potential for process automation is not fully exploited. The solution is closely integrated with central SAP modules such as SD, PM/CS, and PS and enables flexible scenarios, such as billing multiple service orders, cross-client source determination, down payment processing, or the combination of expense and fixed-price billing.
Practical projects—especially at energy suppliers with complex regulatory requirements—show that with targeted customizing and enhancements via BAdIs and enhancements, the DI processor can be extensively adapted to individual business processes. Companies that want to optimize their expense-related billing processes should therefore take a closer look at the possibilities offered by the DI processor.