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Fiscal Year Vairant

This page contains the following topics : Fiscal Year Variant Shortened Fiscal Year Posting Period Variant Open and Close Posting Periods Assign Company Code To Fiscal Year Variant Special Periods Opening New Fiscal Years

Open and Close Posting Periods 5. Assign Company Code To Fiscal Year Variant 6. Special Periods 7. Opening New Fiscal Years

Fiscal Year Vairant

1.

DEFINING FISCAL YEAR VARIANT, POSTING PERIOD VARIANT, OPEN AND CLOSE POSTING PERIOD

In day to day life, we are following the year starting from January to December. This is called calendar year. But while maintaining financial records, some business organizations, maintain records from April to March, some January to December or some in other way. The period from which the financial records are maintained is called Fiscal year. Hence we need to define Fiscal year as per the need of our business organization. A Fiscal year is divided into posting periods. Each posting period is defined by a start and a finish date. Before you can post documents, you must define posting periods, which in turn define fiscal year. In addition to the posting period, you can also define special periods for year-end closing. In General Ledger Accounting , a fiscal year can have maximum of 12 posting periods and 4 special periods. You can define up to 366 posting period in the Special Purpose Ledger. Defining fiscal year is obligatory. One fiscal year can be used by several company codes.

1. Creating Fiscal Year Variant :


1.1. First Screen (Creating Fiscal Year Variant) .. Continuing ..
Menu Path : IMG Menu Financial Accounting Financial Accounting Global Setting Fiscal Year Maintain Fiscal Year Variant T-Code : OB29

Fiscal Year Vairant

1.2. Second Screen (Creating Fiscal Year Variant) Continuing .

Fiscal Year Vairant

1.3. Third Screen (Creating Fiscal Year Variant) Continuing .

Fiscal Year Vairant

Fields of this Screen

a) FV : April to March Fin Year (Alpha-numeric, It is Field Status variant) b) Year dependent : (True, if the posting Fiscal Year is year dependent, then each years need to be defined individually. This is necessary, if the end of the period is not linked to a fixed calendar day. c) Calendar year : (True, if the calendar months match with Fiscal year month) d) No of Posting period : 12 (The year is divided into 12 months. It can be 365 days or can be 2 six month period)

1.4. Fourth and Last Screen (Creating Fiscal Year Variant)

Note : If Fiscal year and Calendar year is same, there is no problem in configuring the Fiscal year. Enter 29 as the day limit for February. This ensures that the system can also determine the

Fiscal Year Vairant

posting period correctly in a leap year. In the above example, fiscal year and calendar year are not same. Hence Year Shift field is used to convert the calendar month to Fiscal month.

1.5 Creating Text Names for months

ORIGINAL NOTES FROM SAP


Fiscal Year
A fiscal year consists of several posting periods and if necessary, special periods that can be posted to after a temporary year-end closing. You define how your fiscal year is set up in the SAP System by creating a fiscal year variant at client level. Each company code is assigned a fiscal year variant. Several company codes can use the same fiscal year variant. Additional information For more information on fiscal year variants, see the "FI Closing and Reporting"

Fiscal Year Vairant

documentation Maintain Fiscal Year Variant (Maintain Shortened Fisc. Year) You can define the following characteristics for a fiscal year variant:
G

how many posting periods a fiscal year has how many special periods you need how the system is to determine the posting periods when posting

When defining your fiscal year, you have the following options:
H

Your fiscal year is the calendar year In this case, you must only select the Calendar year field.

Your fiscal year is not the same as the calendar year and is not yeardependent In this case, you first enter the number of your posting periods in the Number posting per. field. To define your posting periods, select your fiscal year variant and select Periods on the navigation screen. On this screen, enter the month and the day of the period end and the period in each case.

Your fiscal year is not the same as the calendar year and is year-dependent Enter the number of your posting periods in the field Number posting periods and select the field Year-dependent. To define your posting periods, select your fiscal year variant and select Periods on the navigation screen. The system asks for which calendar year your year-dependent fiscal year variant is valid. You then enter the month and day of the period end for each of your periods, and the periods themselves.

Fiscal Year Vairant

It is also possible to determine names for the periods of a non-year-specific fiscal year variant. To do so, select your fiscal year variant and choose Period texts on the navigation screen. You can specify a three-character abbreviation (Jan, Feb, Mar...) and a 20-character long text (January, February, March). Standard settings The following fiscal year variants have been created in the standard system:
G

Variants in which the fiscal year is the same as the calendar and has up to four special periods

Variants for shortened fiscal years. For more information on shortened fiscal years, see Defining shortened fiscal years .

Variants for non-calendar fiscal years:


H

April to March with four special periods July to June with four special periods October to September with four special periods

Variants that are set up on a weekly basis. These variants can only be used in the Special Purpose Ledger (FI-SL) application.

Activities 1. Check the standard fiscal year variants. 2. Change the existing variants, if necessary, or create your own variants. Defining shortened fiscal year

Fiscal Year Vairant

A shortened fiscal year is a fiscal year having less than twelve months, but for which yearend closing must be carried out. The definition of a shortened fiscal year is always yeardependent, since it represents a year-related exception. You must always define an entire calendar year when defining a fiscal year variant. The year-related fiscal year variant therefore contains not only the periods from the shortened fiscal year, but also other periods from the previous or subsequent fiscal year. There are two ways to define a shortened fiscal year:
G

If you only use Financial Accounting (FI) without Asset Accounting (FI-AA) , you can begin a fiscal year with any period. Example If your shortened year goes from January to September, you can assign periods 004 to 012. Assign periods 001 to 003 of the new fiscal year to the months October-December. Specify the number of periods for the fiscal year variant (12 in the example above). Note Keep in mind that the last period of a fiscal year must correspond to the number of periods in that year. This means that if you want to define 12 periods, the last period in that year must be number 12.

If you also implement the Asset Accounting (FI-AA) component or another component such as Materials Management (MM) or Controlling (CO), each fiscal year must begin with period number 001 , to allow asset depreciation calculations to be carried out accurately. For a fiscal year variant, specify the periods and the number of periods the shortened fiscal year has. This way, each fiscal year of the variant can begin with period 001. Example If you define a fiscal year with twelve periods, it can contain a shortened year with nine periods (from 001 to 009 ). The remaining calendar year contains the first three periods of the new fiscal year (periods 001 to 003 ).

Fiscal Year Vairant

For more information about implementing the Asset Accounting component, see the Asset Accounting documentation. Note You define your shortened year and the following normal fiscal years under the same fiscal year variant. Bear in mind that you generally need to ensure that it is possible to post to previous fiscal years. You need to keep the year-dependent fiscal year variant for as long as you are posting in or prior to a shortened fiscal year, or if you are transferring old data from this period. You cannot define year- independent fiscal year variants until the shortened fiscal year has been closed (from the accounting perspective), with no further adjustment postings expected. Year-dependent definitions will be deleted as soon as you convert the fiscal year variants from year-dependent to year-independent. Standard settings Two shortened fiscal year variants are provided with the standard system: variant R1 for a Financial Accounting shortened year, and variant AM for shortened years when Asset Accounting is in use. Activities 1. If you need to define a shortened fiscal year, first determine which of the two options above will be used. 2. Define the shortened fiscal year. To define the shortened year for Asset Accounting, select Navigation -> Shortened fisc. yr.

2. SHORTENED FISCAL YEAR


Fiscal year that contains less than twelve months is called shortened fiscal year. A shortened fiscal year is necessary in the following cases, for example :

Fiscal Year Vairant

o Establishment of a company o Changeover from calendar year to fiscal year or vice versa o Liquidation(closer of company)

3. Posting Period Variant :


A period within a fiscal year for which transaction figures are updated. Every transaction that is posted is assigned to a particular posting period. The transaction figures are then updated for this period. 2.1. First screen (Creating Posting Period Variant) Continuing Menu Path : IMG Menu Financial Accounting Financial Accounting Global Setting Document Define variant for Open Posting period T-Code : SPRO

2.2. Second and last screen (Creating Posting Period Variant)

Fiscal Year Vairant

ORIGINAL NOTES FROM SAP

Define Variants for Open Posting Periods In this activity, you can define variants for open posting periods. Standard settings In the standard setting, a separate variant for posting periods is defined for every company code. The name of this variant is identical to the company code name. Every company code is allocated to this variant with the same name. Thus nothing has changed in the system yet: Every company code has its own variant. If you want to and can continue working on this basis (for example, if you manage with only a few company codes), you do not have to make any changes in the configuration. If however, you want to use identical variants in several company codes, you must change

Fiscal Year Vairant

the default settings as described in the "Activities" section. Activities 1. Change the name in one of the variants. 2. Allocate all company codes, for which you want to use identical variants for open posting periods, to this variant. Detailed information on this can be found in the chapter "Allocate company code to variant". 3. Delete the variants no longer required.

4. Open and Close Posting Periods :


3.1. First screen (Creating Open and Close Posting Period ) Continuing Menu Path : IMG Menu Financial Accounting Financial Accounting Global Setting Document Open and Close Posting period T-Code : SPRO

Fiscal Year Vairant

3.2. Second and last screen (Creating Open and Close Posting Period )

Fields of this Screen

a) Var (Col) :

(Posting Period Variant. This describes the specifications for a

posting period (for example, beginning and end). Each company code refers to exactly one variant. Therefore, as many company codes as you require can use the same variant. b) A (Col) : A D K M S (Account Type or Mask ) + Assets Debtors Creditors Materials GL (for all Accounts)

Fiscal Year Vairant

c) From Acct (col):

(This field, together with the specified year, produces the

beginning of the allowed posting period interval.) d) To Account (col): e) From Per.1 (col) : f) Year (col) : : (The value in this field and the specified year result in the end of

g) To Period (col)

the permitted posting period.) k) AuGr : (Authorisation group

A posting period can be made available to only a limited set of users using the authorization group. A posting period can be successively restricted. If, e.g. 10 users have the posting period authorization with authorization group '0001', and 3 of these 10 users also with authorization group '0002'. If the period is only to be accessible to the 10 selected users the authorization group '0001' is entered in the posting period variant. Access can later be restricted to the remaining 3 users by entering '0002'.)

5. Assigning Posting Period Variant to Company Code

Fiscal Year Vairant

5.1. Assign Company Code To Fiscal Year Variant

ORIGINAL NOTES FROM SAP

Fiscal Year Vairant

Open and Close Posting Periods


In this activity you specify for each variant which posting periods are open for posting. Two intervals are available for doing this (period 1 and period 2). For every interval, enter a lower period limit, an upper period limit and the fiscal year. You close periods by selecting the period specifications so that the periods to be closed are no longer contained. You can also assign authorization groups for permitted posting periods. This means that, for example, some posting periods can only be opened for particular users within monthly or annual closing. You can only assign the authorization group at document header level and it only affects period 1. The authorization object is called F_BKPF_BUP (Accounting document: Authorizations for posting periods). Read the corresponding chapter on "User maintenance" in the "Assigning authorizations" topic. Note You specify G/L account numbers for your specifications. You determine the posting periods allowed for the subledger accounts via the corresponding reconciliation accounts. To do this, you specify the subledger account type, such as D or K, and the corresponding reconciliation account. Caution There must be at least one entry for each variant. This entry must have + in column A ; the columns "From acct" and "To account" may not be filled. In the columns for the posting periods, you specify the periods which are to be opened for the variant. Via further entries, you determine more specifically which periods are to be opened for which accounts. Activities

Fiscal Year Vairant

1. Specify the periods allowed for posting. 2. First, for all variants (minimum entry), enter the periods to which postings can be made. 3. Then, add entries for account types or account areas if the periods are to be limited to certain accounts. 4. Enter an authorization group for each period 1 via which you want to create an authorization protection.

6. Special Periods
Special periods are the periods that subdivide the last regular posting period for closing operations.

7. Opening New Fiscal Years


The new fiscal year is automatically opened when you make your first posting in the new fiscal year or once the balance carried forward program has been run. You do not have to close the old fiscal year before you can post data in the new one. You therefore do not need to create closing or opening financial statements. Before opening a new Fiscal years, you have to keep in mind that : If you are using a year-specific fiscal year variant, you have to first create a variant for new fiscal year and assign it to the relevant company code. If you are using year-dependent document number range, you must have to setup new document number range for the new fiscal year. The relevant posting period must be opened in the new fiscal year.

Fiscal Year Vairant

Question and Answer : Find the following statement whether true or false ? 1. You can define up to 366 posting periods. 2. One fiscal year variant can be used by several company code. 3. The company codes belongs to one company can use several fiscal year. 4. A shortened fiscal year must always be defined as year-dependent. 5. You can exceed a maximum of 16 periods. Answers: 1. false (Because you can define up to 366 posting periods in special ledger accounts. 2. Ture 3. False 4. True 5. False

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