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Question
As we go into our second year-end close with S/4 HANA, the question came up: what does the G/L Balance Carryforward transaction FAGLGVTR and the A/P - A/R Balance Carryforward transaction F.07 technically do under S/4HANA Finance? We know that the balance tables FAGLFLEXT (or GLT0 under Classic G/L), KNC1, and LFC1 are no longer transparent tables in S/4HANA but are Compatibility Views on the new Universal Journal table ACDOCA, so if there is no need to update those former tables what’s the purpose of the Balance Carryforward transactions?
Background
Prior to S/4HANA, the purpose of the G/L Balance Carryforward transaction FAGLGVTR (or transaction F.16 under Classic G/L) was twofold: calculate the current year earnings from the P&L accounts to determine the posting that must be made to the retained earnings account, and create new balance records for the beginning balances of the new fiscal year for each balance sheet account in the G/L table FAGLFLEXT or GLT0. FAGLFLEXT/GLT0 both contained a Balance Carryforward field for each account for each fiscal year, and this field was used in reporting to calculate the cumulative balances for balance sheet accounts.
Similarly, prior to S/4HANA, the purpose of the A/P - A/R Balance Carryforward transaction F.07 was to create the customer and vendor Balance Carryforward field in transparent tables KNC1 and LFC1, which were used to report cumulative customer and vendor balances.
Of course, with S/4HANA all the above mentioned transparent tables FAGLFLEXT, GLT0, KNC1 and LFC1 have been replaced with Compatibility Views on the Universal Journal table ACDOCA, which contains document transactions, not balances. So what do the Balance Carryforward transactions do?
S/4HANA Finance Technical Changes
As it turns out, Universal Journal table ACDOCA does contain G/L carryforward balances for balance sheet accounts, but they are represented in the table as Period 0 documents. FAGLGVTR creates documents in Period 0 of the newly opened fiscal year, representing the cumulative balances as of the beginning of the fiscal year. These documents can be identified in ACDOCA with field Posting Period of “0” (displays as blank) and Document Status of “C” (“Balance Carryforward and Balance Adjustment from Migration”). They will have a system-assigned document number. The process for calculating current year earnings and adding to the beginning retained earnings balance is the same, except that Period 0 documents are created in ACDOCA for the new beginning retained earnings balance.
These Period 0 postings are used to populate the Balance Carryforward field on the Compatibility Views for FAGLFLEXT and GLT0, and are used to display the “Bal.Carryforward” row for balance sheet accounts in transaction FAGLB03 (formerly FS10N).
It is important to note that the period 0 Carryforward postings are not displayed in the Line Item Browser transactions FAGLL03H, FBL1H, and FBL5H.
Another important technical difference in the S/4 HANA Balance Carryforward is that you only need to run it once. Once it has run and created the following year period 0 postings, every new document that you post to the old fiscal year will create a corresponding period 0 document in the new fiscal year, so the carryforward balances are always in sync with the previous year.
So typically what you’ll see in ACDOCA is a whole bunch of period 0 documents with TIMESTAMP values around the time you ran the Carryforward program, and then see period 0 documents with later TIMESTAMPs that match postings that were made to the previous fiscal year subsequent to running the Carryforward.
F.07
F.07 is a slightly different story. Under S/4HANA, the Universal Journal table ACDOCA contains details of all customer and vendor postings, under the applicable reconciliation account. As with all other balance sheet account balances, transaction FAGLGVTR creates Balance Carryforward posting documents, for customer and vendor balances, in period 0 of the new fiscal year. (It does the same for Fixed Assets).
The pre-S/4HANA customer and vendor balance tables KNC1 and LFC1 have been converted to Compatibility Views on ACDOCA in S/4HANA, and in the same manner as FAGLFLEXT/GLT0, the Period 0 postings populate the Balance Carryforward fields on the KNC1 and LFC1 Views, and the Balance Carryforward rows on the Vendor and Customer Balance Display transactions.
So with that being said, what is the purpose of F.07?
SAP Note 2591969 describes that the only update F.07 does is to insert a record for the last day of the previous fiscal year, by company, in table FINS_BCF_FY. Presumably this table is used for customer and vendor reporting, but I could not ascertain it’s purpose, at the time I wrote this.
References
SAP Note 2591969 - AP/AR balance carryforward doesn't have test run option in S/4HANA.
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