SAP Vendor Payment History Report
A vendor payment history report reads SAP's cleared AP items and joins the vendor and document header, so each paid invoice and the payment that cleared it sit on one Excel row.
- PostNow ships this report out of the box – pick it, set filters, run, and it lands in Excel; no SE16, joins or ABAP.
- The data spans several tables. It joins BSAK, LFA1, BKPF on BUKRS + BELNR + GJAHR and resolves the text lookups.
- The standard route is manual. Teams use FBL1N (cleared items) for a single record, then SE16 or SQVI to stitch tables together in Excel.
- You get clean, labelled columns. LIFNR, NAME1, BELNR, GJAHR, BLART, BUDAT and more, each with a plain-English heading.
- Refreshable, not a one-off dump. Rerun the report to pull the latest, with your own SAP authorizations enforced. Works on ECC and S/4HANA.
What the vendor payment history report shows
A SAP vendor payment history report answers a simple question that SAP makes surprisingly hard: give me every vendor payment history record, with all the attributes that matter, in one place I can filter and share. On screen, SAP shows one record at a time and splits its attributes across several views. This report flattens all of that into a single Excel sheet, one row per record, with the codes turned into readable labels.
Because the output is a plain sheet, it becomes the starting point for the work people actually do with it: a data-quality review, a cleanup before a migration, a hand-off to an auditor, or a source for a pivot. The value is not just the extract, it is that the extract is complete and consistent every time you run it.
The SAP tables behind it
BSAK holds cleared accounts-payable items: invoices that have been paid and cleared. Each row is a cleared line keyed by company code, document number and fiscal year, tagged with the vendor. The clearing document AUGBL and the clearing date AUGDT record which payment settled the invoice, and because one payment often clears several invoices, AUGBL groups them. The vendor name is joined from LFA1 on the vendor number. The document header BKPF adds the document type and header dates. Together they turn a raw ledger table into a readable payment history.
The joins are the whole reason this is worth automating. Miss one and the report is subtly wrong; get the key fields slightly off and rows fan out or drop. Doing it once, correctly, and then reusing it is what turns a fragile spreadsheet exercise into a reliable report.
The columns you get
Every column below is a real SAP field, labelled in plain English, with the table it is read from. These are the fields most teams want on a vendor payment history report; a tool like PostNow lets you add or remove columns without touching the underlying join.
| SAP field | What it is | Source |
|---|---|---|
| LIFNR | Vendor | BSAK |
| NAME1 | Name | LFA1 |
| BELNR | Document number | BSAK |
| GJAHR | Fiscal year | BSAK |
| BLART | Document type | BSAK |
| BUDAT | Posting date | BSAK |
| AUGBL | Clearing document | BSAK |
| AUGDT | Clearing date | BSAK |
| DMBTR | Amount (local) | BSAK |
| WRBTR | Amount (doc) | BSAK |
| SHKZG | Debit/credit | BSAK |
| ZLSCH | Payment method | BSAK |
Building it yourself: FBL1N (cleared items), SE16 or SQVI
FBL1N shows cleared items for a vendor on screen and can export them, but it is built around one selection at a time and does not easily give a clean multi-vendor, multi-period flat file with exactly the columns you want. SE16 on BSAK gives the cleared items as a raw list, but leaves the vendor name from LFA1 and the header attributes from BKPF to be matched separately in Excel. Reconstructing which payment cleared which invoice through AUGBL by hand is fiddly and easy to get wrong. Anything beyond the standard layout means an ABAP report.
None of this is impossible; people do it every month. The problem is that it is manual, easy to get subtly wrong, and stale the moment it is saved. Each refresh means repeating the same exports and the same lookups, and any new column means another round with a developer. For a one-off you can push through it. For a report you run every period, the cost adds up. If you want the general landscape of options first, see our overview of SAP reporting tools and how to get SAP to Excel.
The out-of-the-box way: PostNow's vendor payment history report
PostNow's Report Library already contains this exact report, pre-built. You do not assemble the joins or resolve the texts; that is done for you. You open Excel, log in to postnow.ai from the task pane, pick the vendor payment history report, set your range filters, and run. The governed, joined data lands in the sheet, ready to filter, pivot or share, and you can refresh it whenever you need the latest.
Two things make this different from a SE16 dump. First, it is governed: PostNow enforces your own SAP authorizations, so you only ever see the data you are entitled to, and every row can be traced back to its source. Second, it is repeatable: the same report, the same columns, refreshable on demand, with no ABAP to write or maintain. That is the payoff of teaching the hard version first, then handing you the shortcut.
Filters and selection you'll want
A good vendor payment history report is only as useful as the selection you can put on it. The filters most teams reach for are:
- Vendor range (LIFNR)
- Company code (BUKRS)
- Posting date (BUDAT range)
- Clearing date (AUGDT range)
- Document type (BLART)
- Payment method (ZLSCH)
You set these once as your selection, then reuse or adjust them each run. Because the selection travels with the report, a monthly extract becomes a single refresh rather than a rebuild.
ECC vs S/4HANA
BSAK is a compatibility view over the Universal Journal (ACDOCA and BSEG) in S/4HANA, and PostNow reads it directly, so the payment history report behaves the same on ECC and S/4HANA even though the underlying storage changed.
The practical takeaway is that a report built on the tables and read through standard interfaces survives a migration far better than one wired to a specific screen or a custom program. When you eventually move from ECC to S/4HANA, a table-based vendor payment history report keeps working, which is one less thing to rebuild in an already large project.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get a vendor payment history report out of SAP into Excel?
You can export the underlying tables with SE16 and stitch them together in Excel, build a query in SQVI, or ask a developer for an ABAP report. The quickest governed route is a tool that already has the report built: in PostNow you log in to postnow.ai from the Excel task pane, pick the vendor payment history report from the Report Library, set your filters and run, and the joined data lands in the sheet.
Which SAP tables hold vendor payment history data?
The data is spread across several tables that have to be joined on their key fields: BSAK, LFA1, BKPF. The report links them on BUKRS + BELNR + GJAHR and resolves the text tables so the output reads in plain language.
Is there a standard SAP report or transaction for vendor payment history?
There are standard transactions (FBL1N (cleared items) and others), but they are built for on-screen display or for a fixed layout, not for a clean, refreshable Excel extract with exactly the columns you want. That is why most teams fall back to SE16 exports or a custom report.
How do I export vendor payment history data to Excel without ABAP?
Use a tool whose SAP connection is set up once and then reads through standard interfaces, so no ABAP is needed for day-to-day reporting. PostNow reads the vendor payment history tables, performs the joins and text lookups, and writes the result straight into Excel, refreshable on demand, with your own SAP authorizations enforced.
Can I refresh or schedule the report?
Yes. Because the report keeps its connection and selection, you can refresh it to pull the latest data at any time rather than rebuilding the extract. This is the main advantage over a one-off SE16 dump, which is stale the moment it is saved.
Does it work in S/4HANA?
BSAK is a compatibility view over the Universal Journal (ACDOCA and BSEG) in S/4HANA, and PostNow reads it directly, so the payment history report behaves the same on ECC and S/4HANA even though the underlying storage changed.
How do I see which payment cleared an invoice?
The clearing document AUGBL and clearing date AUGDT on each cleared item point to the payment document that settled it. Grouping cleared items by AUGBL shows every invoice paid by one payment run. PostNow surfaces these columns so the invoice-to-payment link is visible without manual matching.
Can I report cleared items across many vendors and periods at once?
Yes. BSAK holds one row per cleared line, so a report can span any range of vendors and any posting or clearing date range. Filter by vendor range, company code and date to get exactly the payment history you need for a review or audit.