GL account hierarchy for consolidation

[former_member771980]

Dear SAP Experts,

A multinational enterprise has over 100,000 GL accounts in use worldwide and its consolidation team is planning to reduce the number of GL accounts in use drastically by asking subsidiaries to transfer GL to new GL accounts they specified. The proposed methodology will make subsidiary companies having to deal with legacy GL and new GL accounts in SAP all the time in the future when checking past transactions and appears to be a labor intensive approach not to mention the fact that the number of GL accounts which subsidiaries have to deal with will increase dramatically after opening new specified GL accounts. Because of this, I'd like to explore an alternative less labor intensive solution using existing SAP functionalities. Is there a function in SAP to deal with GL account hierarchy so that the consolidation team in headquarter can only look at the new GL accounts which has 'one-to-many' relationship with the GL accounts in use worldwide so that for the consolidation team, if they don't want to, they don't have to look at the 100,000 GL accounts but say, they can just deal with much less number of 2,000 GL accounts with higher hierarchy level which will appear on their SAP screen? I believe that this kind of GL streamlining work should be done smartly by SAP programming and GL account data mapping approach and not by human drudgery, and I am hoping that there is such a function in SAP, but as I don't know much about SAP functionalities, I'd greatly appreciate it if SAP experts can point me in the right direction.

Newbie7

[former_member751591]

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[fmnor79 · Accepted solution]

Hi

regarding SAP GL account and Group Account (used in consolidations), it is the aggregated account for (many) operational accounts (your 100.000 number). In ERP, many operational accounts can be assigned to one group account number, as shown below (GL account master data maintenance via t-code FS00). Through that transactional data (postings in system) will become tagged with group account number (ACDOCA table, Universal Journal) for further use in management and/or legal consolidation.

Best regards,

Frank

[former_member771980 · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot, Frank M. In my FS00 screen, I cannot see that Group Account Number as shown below, but I guess that could be due to different configuration which can be modified.

From your advice, I understand that instead of transferring GL accounts to new GL accounts, a new mapping with much less number of GL accounts with higher hierarchy can be created by utilizing 'Group Account Number' field in FS00. Is this assumption correct? If that is the case, I would imagine that we can achieve the same goal of reducing the GL account numbers for the consolidation team by using this function in SAP. Please let me know if this assumption is not correct. Also, if this is a standard function in SAP, is there any idea why the transfer of GL was suggested to begin with? I'd appreciate it if you could let me know possible limitations of this approach.

Thanks a lot for your advice.

Best regards,

Newbie7

[fmnor79 · Accepted solution]

Under t-code SPRO (Implementation Guide) and Financial Accounting > .... field "Group Account Number" is still suppressed, as Group Chart of accounts needs to be assigned still, kindly refer to below post:

https://answers.sap.com/questions/8575030/group-account-number-not-available.html

[former_member771980 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Frank M. It seems utilization of the 'Group Account Number' field in FS00 is a much better way of streamlining the number of GL accounts than transferring the account balances to new GL accounts. With this function available, there seems to be no need for the central GL account alignment mandate to open and close certain GL accounts to align with the Group chart of accounts.

[former_member771980 · Accepted solution]

I have a further question regarding the utilization of 'Group Account Number' field in FS00. I understand from the link you gave me that the currently suppressed 'Group Account Number' field can be activated by a transaction code OB13. At the moment, I don't have access to OB13, but can we set the activation by company code by company code basis? I'd like to find out if some companies in the consolidation group which do not want to transfer the balance to new GL and close the old account can activate 'Group Account Number' field through OB13 while other companies which opt to transfer the balances to specified GL can keep the 'Group Account Number' field suppressed so that they don't have to do both transferring the balance and then filling in 'Group Account Number' field on top of it. I am also wondering if there is a massive populating function for 'Group Account Number' field so that the companies which keep the field suppressed can get them populated massively centrally, such that the New GL created = 'Group Account Number'. Do you see any problem with this hybrid approach? I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone could give me further guidance.