A Customer Master Record is a permanent record that contains key information about a business partner or a material. This information must be entered into the system before any transactions can take place involving the business partner [customer] or a material. Entering all the information about a customer or a material into the system before making transactions insures that subsequent transactions or inquiries will have consistent data and reports and analyses can be done in an orderly way. Master Records can be edited or changed when necessary. Changing master records is frequently called "Maintaining" in SAP

BRS - Bank Reconciliation Statement

A bank reconciliation statement is a statement prepared by organizations to reconcile the balance of cash at bank in a company's own records with the bank statement on a particular date.

The differences may arise because of the following reasons:

     - Cheques deposited into bank but not yet collected by bank

     - Cheques issued by the organization but not yet presented for payment

     - Cheques directly deposited by customers into the bank

     - Bank charges debited by bank

     - Interest credited or some receipts directly collected by bank based on org. request.

     - Some payments directly made by bank based on the organizations request.

So, the statement shows the reasons as what are the reasons for difference in balance.

Trade receivables are amounts billed by a business to its customers when it delivers goods or services to them in the ordinary course of business. These billings are typically documented on formal invoices, which are summarized in an accounts receivable aging report. In the general ledger, trade receivables are recorded in a separate accounts receivable account, and are classified as current assets on the balance sheet if you expect to receive payment from customers within one year.

To record a trade receivable, the accounting software creates a debit to the accounts receivable account and a credit to the sales account when you complete an invoice. When the customer eventually pays the invoice, the accounting software records the cash receipt transaction with a debit to the cash account and a credit to the accounts receivable account.

Trade receivables vary from non trade receivables in that non trade receivables are for amounts owed to the company that fall outside of the normal course of business, such as employee advances or insurance reimbursements. Also, most or all of the transactions passing through the main accounts receivable account are generated by the accounting system, as you create customer invoices and credit memos, whereas the transactions recording non trade receivables nearly always involve journal entries.

After posting the all accounts in the Ledger a statement is prepared to showing debit and credit balances.Debit balances must be tally with the Credit side balance is called trial balance

Finance:It is the branch of economics that studies the management of money and other assets.In simpler terms it can be defined as the commercial activity of providing funds and capital.It addresses questions like -- what funds are required by the org & How they can be raised &  How they have to be allocated etc.

Accounts: It is the occupation of maintaining and auditing records and preparing financial reports for a business. Accounts provides quantitative information about finances. It addresses issues like what amount of funds have been allocated to various activities, how the book-keeping is being done etc.

Both functions are distinct but complimentary to each other.

Finance and accounts are highly specilized and distinct areas and hence most organizations have seperate sections of finance and accounts.

In international accounting LIFO and extraordinary items are prohibited

In international accounting, proposed dividend entry is made in the Year in which it is declared, but in Indian Accounting Standards Proposed Divided entry is passed in the year for which dividend is declared. e.g. Dividend for 09-10 declared in AGM on 14 Sept 2010, Financial (Accounting) Year = 2009-10

In Indian Accounting entry would be passed in 2009-10 Accounts books, but in International Accounting entry would be passed in the year 2010-11 Accounts books.

A key functional area of SAP for Utilities that supports cross-company exchange of settlement data based on international standards such as EDI, XML, and Microsoft Excel.

Intercompany data exchange manages data transfer between retailers, distributors, and independent service operators with special regard to the requirements in deregulated markets.

Automatic payments batch means auto payment is done on the bases of the batch, which u created for the payment of particular pay group etc.

Automatic payments means auto payments is done on the bases of single transaction u selected base for the payments