General Ledger Accounting.

To create a G/L account the following are the steps: 1) Populate the chart of accounts configuration screen. 2) Populate the company code configuration screen. The following are the steps that needed to be done when creating a G/L account: IMG -> financial acctng -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> G/L Account creation and processing -> Edit G/L account (Individual Processing) -> Edit G/L account centrally.(FS00)

In the chart of accounts configuration section: IMG -> financial acctng -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> G/L Account creation and processing -> Edit G/L account (Individual Processing) -> Edit chart of accounts data.(FSP0)

1) 2) 3) 4)

Fill in the account group of this particular G/L account you are creating. Select whether this is a balance sheet account or P&L statement account. Enter description of the account in the text fields. Enter group account number if any.

In the company code section: IMG -> financial acctng -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> G/L Account creation and processing -> Edit G/L account (Individual Processing) -> Edit company code data.(FSS0) 1) Enter the account currency. 2) Check indicator display balances in local currency. 3) Fill in the sort key if you need to. 4) Fill in the field status group. 5) For a bank account, fill in the house bank id and the account id with the bank. Also fill in the interest calculation fields if any.

Creating G/L accounts can be done in 2 different ways: a) Copy G/L accounts from another chart of accounts: IMG -> financial acctng -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> G/L Account creation and processing -> Alternative methods -> copy G/L accounts -> Copy chart of accounts.(OBY7)

b) Copy G/L accounts from another company code.

IMG -> financial acctng -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> G/L Account creation and processing -> Alternative methods -> copy G/L accounts -> Copy company code.(OBY2)

A chart of accounts is assigned to the company code. A chart of accounts can be used by multiple company codes. So any changes made to the G/L account in the chart of account configuration screen will transmit to all the company codes which have this as their chart of accounts. Once the chart of accounts is assigned to the company code, the company code dependent section of the G/L account such as currency needs to be populated. A G/L account can either be a Balance sheet account or P+L income stmt account.

Account groups:
Normally for a business there will be a huge number of accounts. In SAP, you group these accounts into account groups based on similar business functions, say one account group for all cash accounts, one for all expense accounts and so on and allocate a number range for each of these account groups. Basically all these account groups have a field status group where in all the accounts belonging to this group will have the same screen layout of the fields that needs to be filled. IMG -> financial acctng -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> Preparations -> Define account group (OBD4)

Retained Earnings account:

To complete the configuration of G/L, you need to define a retained earnings account. Basically a retained earnings accounts is used to transfer the net income/loss for the period to the next period in the P+L statement. IMG -> financial acctng -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> Preparations -> Define retained earnings account (OB53)

Reconciliation Accounts: Reconciliation accounts are another class of accounts in the General Ledger. One of the main things to know about reconciliation accounts is you cannot post to them directly. They are populated in the customer and vendor and asset master records and all revenues and expenses and depreciation postings from the A/P and A/R and AA subsidiary ledgers are posted to the reconciliation accounts in the General Ledger automatically and in real time. We can define a G/L account as a reconciliation account by entering the

type of reconciliation account that it is into the field Recon. Account for account type.(D for customers, k for vendors).

G/L Balance interest calculation: For those G/L accounts say bank accounts that have an interest indicator and interest calculation frequency set, the system calculates the interest and updates the fields date of last interest run and Key date of last int. calc. You can change the latter 2 fields if there was an error in the interest calculation.

Also to do Bank Interest calculation, there is an entire section in IMG for this.

Going to Interest posting -> Prepare G/L account balance Interest calculation (t.code OBV2)

Automatic account determination ( Automatic account assignment/Automatic Posting): Automatic account determination allows the system to determine the correct G/L account to post to by considering the type of transaction and other factors. Some of the examples are retained earnings account, sales/use tax automatic account assignment, MM automatic account assignment, SD automatic account assignment.The t.code to get to this screen is FBKP. There is no menu path to get here.

Financial Statement version: Financial Statement version(FSV) group together related accounts into balance sheet and income statement format for financial reporting purposes. This is generated as a part of year end closing. First you define financial statement version and once it is configured, you generate the Balance sheet/P+L statement.

IMG -> Financial Actng -> G/L acctng -> Business transactions -> Closing -> Documenting -> Define financial statement versions (OB58).

For generating balance sheet/P+L statement go to:

Some Useful Transaction codes (also called t.codes) are:

1) OBY6 Company code global parameters 2) OBD4 Creating account groups. 3) OBY7 Copy chart of accounts 4) OB29 Fiscal Year Variant 5) OBBO -- Posting period variant 6) OX02 Company codes create, check and delete 7) EC01 Copy company code 8) OX03 Business areas. 9) OBCL Set tax codes for non taxable transactions. 10) OB53 Retained earnings account 11) OBY2 Copy G/L accounts from chart to company code. 12) OBC4 field status variants 13) FBN1 G/L number ranges. 14) OB58 Financial statement versions 15) OBA4 Tolerance groups 16) OBA7 Document types. 17) FBKP Define accounts for tax. (automatic account determination). 18) OBYC Automatic posting procedures 19) OB09 Account determination for OI exchange rate differences. Problems faced by me: 1) Could not create G/L accounts in company code configuration screen alone. Everytime error message would pop up saying to create the account in chart of accounts screen and come back rather than taking me to the chart of accounts configuration screen.

2) Had to allocate new company code I created to non taxable transactions(t.code OBCL).

3) I transported G/L accounts from once company code to another company code. The number ranges did not get transported. So everytime, I try to create a document it would say that the number range is missing. I had to create the number ranges manually. So when you are doing transports, the number ranges will not be carried over. Topics not discussed here but should be included: 1) 2) 3) 4) G/L automatic clearing Assigning accounts for G/L clearing differences Configuration for foreign currency valuation. Define adjustment accounts for say GR/IR clearing. 5) FI integration with other modules (CO, MM, SD). 6) Special G/L accounts. 7) Accruals and deferrals posting. 8) End of month processes.

Questions:
1) Can you change the local currency of the company code midway, say after 6 months? If not why? How can you achieve this if you want to change the local currency? 2) Is it possible to not copy G/L accounts when copying from other company code? 3) In practice, do businesses create company codes from copying or from scratch? 4) If multiple company codes are using the same chart of accounts, how does the income stmt and FSV look? 5) Why do use a key say X when defining retained earnings in the account type field? 6) Is one retained earnings account normally sufficient for a business? Are there cases where there are multiple retained earnings account? What is the impact to all the accounts if this is the case? Does this break the automatic assignment of retained earnings account to expense accounts? 7) OIM for mostly clearing accts (Bank clearing, GR/IR clearing, salary clearing) why not others? 8) Set Only balances in local currency for cash discount and GR/IR clearing accounts Why? 9) Special G/L indicators? 10) How do you activate additional currencies like group currency and hard currency? Does this affect open items? 11) What is Tcode 3KEH default balance sheet accounts with profit center but excluding those for AR,AP,FA and inventory. (3KEI) 12) Can you change the error message to warning via OBA5 t.code? 13) Aged trail balance report? 14) Can you delete G/L accounts for which transactions have already been posted and company code is productive? 15) IMG -> G/L acctng -> G/L accts -> Master records -> Preparations -> Balances -> Maintain worklist for displaying balances -- What is it?

Good to know: 1) Fields which are suppressed may contain values and these values still take effect. 2) You can set or cancel OIM(open item mgmt) only if the account has a zero balance. 3) Accounts having a foreign currency as its account currency can only be posted in foreign currency. 4) Fields currency and field status groups are always required fields when creating G/L account in company code. 5) R/3 delivers these values..

For customer invoices, debit is PK 01 and credit is PK 50 For vendor invoices, credit is PK 31 and debit is 40